Examples

Sambac Energy

Recall that Sambac is a joint venture between two major firms. Each firm tended to use their own plans and planning methods. Every time management changed, the plans changed. This consumed a great deal of time and slowed the projects down. It was first decided to have each firm produce a set of templates and list of issues. This was not productive. It took too much time and did not yield results for in-country operations. The second time around the method was different. The templates were generated locally. The existing project plans were retrofitted into the template. Issues were defined and associated with the plan and template. These were then provided to the two companies. It was very successful, because they could come up with a better idea. One company began soon after to employ the templates on their own. They even sent people out into the field to learn how to do it!

Whitmore Bank

Whitmore was discussed earlier in setting up the structure of the project. In this case, people had not employed templates before. The project leaders constructed an initial version of the templates for people to react to and change. Another technique that was useful was to establish a forum in the team to share lessons learned in setting up the template and defining issues. Often encountered is the problem of deciding when an issue is a major issue. Rather than considering who or what is involved in the issue, the criterion that was used was to answer the questions, “What if this issue is not resolved? What will happen?”