Enumclaw Leadership
Making Schedules
Schedules: Purpose One
 The first is to make commitments about when things
will be done.
 Its almost a contract between the members of the work
team.
 In business, they are used externally to close a deal.
 Often a customer is paying for a timeline (thing Fed
Ex. Or UPS)
Schedules: Purpose Two
 Encourage everyone who’s contributing to a project to
see their efforts as part of a whole.
 Until there is a draft schedule suggesting specific dates
and times for when things will be done, its unlikely
that connections and dependencies across teams will
be scrutinized.
 Psychological power in a schedule that externalizes
and amplifies the commitment that is being made.
Forcing Function
 Psychological or pressure shift.
 Naturally forces a change in perspective, attitude, or
behavior.
Schedules: Third Purpose
 Tool to track progress and break work into manageable
chucks.
 Breaking things down into one or two day sizes
actually helps people understand what the work is that
they need to do.
 House in 120 days???
Size of Project
 The larger and more complex a project, the more
important a schedule becomes.
 First game is September 4th.
 Three weeks of practice
 Offense, defense, kicking
 Who starts, second team
 Game situational prep
Rule of Thirds
 Design – figuring out what should be done. Planning
the assembly or dance.
 Implementing – actually doing it.
 Testing – analyzing.
Divide
and
Conquer
 One big project means many little schedules.
Phase One
Phase Two
Phase Three
Design
Design
Design
Implementation
Implementation
Implementation
Testing
Testing
Testing
Estimates
 All estimates are probabilities.
 A detailed and thorough analysis can yield 90%
 Press people on estimating with confidence.
 Estimates depend on the understanding of the
projects goals.
 Previous performance
Sophomore Class Game Night
 Date: May 20th
 Team members: Brooke, Bailey, Zoey, Keelie, Jake,
Isaiah, and Ariel.
 Vision: To create an activity to raise money for the
sophomore class.
 Goal 1: raise $500.00
 Goal 2:
 Goal 3:
Special Needs Bracelet Project
 Date: ongoing
 Team members: Ariely and Jamie
 Vision: To raise money and exposure for the high
needs students at Enumclaw.
 Goal 1: To raise $_______
 Goal 2: To provide opportunities for these students to
run a business on campus.
 Goal 3: to provide a community service project.
Sock and Clothing Drive
 Date: May 11th – 14th
 Team members: Rechelle, Seth, Morgan, Savannah,
Lauren, Eric, Trent, Peyton
 Vision: To raise $500.00 to donate to global cause.
 Goal 1:
 Goal 2:
 Goal 3:
Senior Class Talent Show
 Date: April 16th
 Team members: Katie, Rob, Alyssa, Keyla
 Vision: To create a talent show which will raise $500.00
for the Senior Class
 Goal 1:
 Goal 2:
Roadside Litter Project
 Date: May 2nd
 Team members: Nikole, Taylor, Griffin, Sam, and
Carson
 Vision: successfully clean Veasey Cumberland
Highway assigned to EHS.
 Goal 1:
 Goal 2:
Assignment #1
 Using Friday’s assignment as a starting point,
brainstorm all tasks that need to be completed to
reach your goals.
 Group all the activities into categories.
 Assign team members to activity groups.
 Produce a wall chart showing tasks, names,
completion dates.
What Must Happen for Schedules
to Work?
 Milestone length should match project volatility.
 Be optimistic in the vision and skeptical in the
schedule. (Murphy's Law when the computer locks up)
 Plan checkpoints for add/cut discussions.
 Gauge the team’s experience with the problem space.
Sam’s experience planning assemblies.
Project Planning
 What is it we need to do? This is usually called
requirements gathering.
 How will we do it? Designing or specifying.
 Go slow to go fast
 Abe Lincoln said, if I had six hours to cut down a tree,
I’d spend four hours sharpening the axe and two hours
cutting down the tree.
Plans and Perspectives
 Business perspective includes profit, sales, expenses,
competition and costs. Who is the customer and what
do they want?
 Technology perspective focuses on how things are
built and how they will work.
 Customer perspective is the most important of the
three. What do the students want in an assembly?
Student body
perspective
Leadership
perspective
Faculty perspective
Asking the Right Questions
 What does the Enumclaw community want in an
assembly?
 Do we have the technology to satisfy the needs of our
customers? Screens, cordless mics. Computers.
 How do we prepare and practice without missing
classes?
Common Bad Ways to Decide
Bad Way
Example
Why
Problem
Do it like last time
This assembly will
be like last years
Not the desire to
go back and do
new research
School expects
more.
People get excited
about trends b/c
they are fun to
follow.
Customer
requirement
should trump fads.
We will build what We will use the
is hot and trendy
newest Disney
Movie
If we build it, they
will come.
Assembly X will be By distracting
the best ever
everyone to the
building, they
forget the reason
for building.
Does the world
need a better
mousetrap? Kids
will come b/c it
was cool.
The Daily Work
 The most important part of the process is the roles
that people are expected to play
 Everyone should know what the milestones reports,
presentations, documents are.
 There should be frequent meetings where each
perspective is discussed.
Planning Involves
 The most powerful way to plan a project involves three
equal perspectives: student body, leadership, and
adults.
Creating a Vision
Vision
 The value of writing things down like to recipe for that
cake.
What all are
doing
What some are
doing
What I’m doing
Vision, goals
 A strong vision statement of the assembly: The spring
sports pep assembly will recognize all athletes while
entertaining the student-body and faculty.
 Can the vision be drawn?
 Goals: students would still attend if they were not
required to go.
Where Ideas Come From
 Outside the box thinking.
Tools for Ideas
T Chart
affinity
Pareto
Venn
Using a Pareto Chart in Planning
 Suggestions to improve assemblies from BOC
meetings.
 Rank them in order
 Place on a bar chart from most to least
Ideas
 Following brainstorming look for ways to group ideas
into like categories.
 Three to five alternatives.
 Two choices investigate, research, prototype, and
question.
 One design investigate, research, prototype, and
question the final choice.
Specifications
 Requirements we must live up to.
 Feature. A feature specification describes the what the
customer receives from our product.
 Work breakdown structure which is all the small
details. Ex. Write the request to purchase, Natasha
types up PO, Natasha sends to Tim at district, Tim
assigns a # and returns, we can order.
ASB Processes
 Purchase Order Process
 Facilities Process
 Promotion Process
 Security Process
 Staff Communication Process
Communication
 Projects are only as good as people on the team.
 How to facilitate meetings.
 Direct conversation
 End the conversation
 Make history
Meetings
 Facilitator’s role
 Are the right people in the room?
 Sit or stand
 Prepare
 Gadgets
 Being on time
 End with clear steps and owners
How to Make Things Happen
 Priorities make things happen.
 Common ordered lists
 Project Management the most common types of
ordered lists are project goals, features, and work
items.
Know the Critical Path
 The shortest sequence of work that can complete the
project. Diagram or flow chart.
 Show where bottlenecks will be
 If features A, B, and C are can’t be completed until D is
done, D must be on the critical path.
Emotional Toolkit
 Pressure: a compelling, constraining influence or
force. A constraint can’t be moved.
 The assembly is this day.
 Stephen Covey’s 4 quadrants
The Four Colors
 Put the right people on the bus and get them in the
correct seat.
The Middle Game Strategy
 Tactical (daily) questions. Looking at the goals
everyday.
 Is what your doing today contributing to the big
picture?
 Weekly questions
 What’s the probability for hitting target?
 What adjustments
End Game Strategy
 Big deadlines are a set of small deadlines.
 Define exit criteria at the beginning.
 The end-of-game is a slow, mind-numbing process.
The challenge is to narrow the scope of changes until a
satisfactory release remains.
 Evaluate what worked, what didn’t and what to change.