On his March 5th blog entry, Scoreboards & Construction, Dan Brown mentions an article written by Dennis Sowards called You Can Be Guided by Scoreboard, Dashboard.
Dennis talks about how it is important for companies to use a "Scoreboard" to keep track of the company’s profitability, customer and employee satisfaction, safety, etc., and a "Dashboard" to keep track of the details that get the company to the end result (for example: cash available, invoices outstanding, etc).
Projects also benefit from a Scorecard approach. A two-year study conducted by the International Partnering Institute showed that every project team that had a monthly scorecard improved over the life of the project. The study was based 13 different projects over the course of two years. Projects were primarily construction projects, but also included a strategic planning project and an information technology project. Each team came together at the start of their project in a “partnering” session. The partnering session allowed the team members to get to know one another and to agree on roles and responsibilities as well as how decisions would be made (process). Together the team created a commitment on how they would work together (behavior), goals for the project (results), and then they identified barriers to the achievement of those goals. Once they prioritized the barriers most critical for their success, they created ways to break down the barrier or mitigate the impact of the barrier. They made commitments to one another (commitments). All of these agreements were included in a monthly scorecard.
The scorecard was sent out to each individual team member every month over the course of the project. The individual rated how well the team was doing at living up to its commitments and agreements. Ratings were on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being Excellent and 1 being Poor. A report was sent to each team member monthly indicating where the team felt they were with regard to their behavior, process, goals and commitments. All scorecards and scorecard reports were sent to and from a neutral third party so that confidentiality was assured. It is imperative that the team members feel free to tell the truth from their perspective. That is what the neutral facilitator permits.
If you are interested in implementing a project scorecard for your team, here are some tips to help assure its success.
1. The team members need to be a part of developing the measures so that they buy-in and are committed to them. Measures need to be updated approximately every 90 days to make sure they are current and relevant.
2. Team members will not tell the truth if there is fear of retribution, so having a neutral third party implement the scorecard is important to its success.
3. Teams that review their scorecard results monthly were much more likely to be able to improve. The best results came when the scorecard was “required” and not optional.
4. Senior management who met together on a regular basis to review the scorecard results and then worked to support the team by removing barriers and providing resources significantly contributed to the success of the project.
5. Organizations that had several scorecards for different projects began to see patterns, thus identifying internal issues that were preventing project success.
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