Remodeling: Think of this summer’s rush of work as the meal conceived of and planned in the dreary light of February and March. Now that we’ve eaten it, our stomachs are full, and as the bright light of summer fades, reality once again sets in. If you’re like many remodelers I work with, you’re concerned about work in November and December; few of my clients have backlogs of contracted work that would last longer than 4 months or that would provide one-third of annual volume.
4 comments:
At first I thought the article would talk about a critical path kind of strategy. But it was more of a whole corporate structure planning. The view of the business structure of a remodeling company was interesting. So often, we think that we just call contractors and they show up, work and then we pay them money. I often forget there is a negotiation process and a real business structure to their work. I did not know about the "Swim Lane" organization chart structure, it seems that format would also be useful for tracking things that are developed in multiple departments.
I really like the idea of a swim map and how things relate to each other. Recently I have been confronted with some failures and trying to figure out how to learn from them and move forward. Some of those failures have been skipping steps or completing the step but just a little to late in the process, when it should have been done earlier. Being a visual person this also appeals to me in that fashion and help me to move forward. Ideally this would be a good aid for me to not skip steps and to remember all the steps in a process.
Though I am not sure if this is the best for making sure you have all the steps, just that you are doing the predefined steps. I would say, one must understand and write all the steps prior to actually being able to complete them .
Something I will have to consider in the future.
This article could not be more true! I can't begin to tell you how many times I have used visual diagrams. In this format you are able to take the information and group parts together to show how they connect to each other. This really useful in determining the execution of a task. This is because when you break down the project into small simple tasks it because much more doable, and more importantly allows you ti see which tasks need to happen, so that others can. This is the exact reason why we do the rube goldberg project here. I could not be more of a fan of this idea and hope that others see as much of the value in it as I do!
I would be very interested to see or make a process chart for a theatre production or season. Of course, it would have to be theatre-specific, but I’m sure we’d see some similarities between different organizations. Having a clearly defined process is one of our shortcomings here, because it seems like students across a discipline don’t always have the same knowledge of their responsibilities in the process and how they intersect with other departments. I think this is due to different experience levels and different ways of working, but also to the fact that there aren’t clear departmental guidelines and expectations communicated to the whole team, which means that certain people might not have an understanding of what their collaborators need from them to accomplish their work, and might also not even understand the full scope of their own responsibility.
The “it’s different for every production” line is thrown out a lot around here, which is true, but not quite as often as we think. Yes, it is different for every show because of particular needs and challenges, but most shows actually fit within one standard process framework. This process is not clearly outlined and defined in the first place, which is why it differs so much from one production to another when it doesn’t actually need to.
The best way to run an efficient, well organized and successful organization is to implement a system and sticking to it while allowing for process flexibility when a certain project calls for it. It doesn’t seem like we’re quite there yet here at school, and the difficulty of implementation is largely due to the fact that there is a quick student turnover rate which prevents institutionalized change towards continuity.
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