Building a warehouse - with post-its

A new term and a new team. The second term started off with a rigorous 1-week project management course which concluded with a simulation of building a warehouse. We had to come up with a project plan to build a warehouse adhering to the different conditions laid out in the project contract. The actual construction process was simulated over half a day with each construction week scaled down to 20 minutes. The goal was to complete the project with the maximum profit.

It was fun to see each person resorting to his/her tool of choice for the simulation. Many relied on MS Excel to crunch all those numbers. The first thing that I did was to open MS Project. I listed out the activities and started scheduling them. In spite of my experience in using MS Project, I found myself struggling to flexibly allocate the resources (labour in this case). By the way, we had been advised that using tools like Excel and MS Project doesn't help much, but do we listen?

Anyway, the idea was not to rely too much on these tools and plan the whole project on the wall using paper and post-its. And boy, did it work! I am now totally convinced with the power of visual project management. Every possible information that we needed was on the wall. The simulation involved assessing the project progress reported to us and submitting an action form indicating the new activities to execute and the resources that had to be allocated for those activities. With all the data neatly captured on the wall, every person in the team was able to fill-in the action plan within seconds. And when a surprise activity was thrown on to us during the simulation, we were able to easily move around the post-its and reschedule the project.

The visual plan gave each member a complete overview of the project at a glance and helped them to adjust their own activities accordingly. The fact that the plan was on the wall, and not on a computer screen, forced us to be on our feet and be agile in our responses.

More than anything, the simulation was one good team building exercise. It helped me understand and bond with my new team (of six, including me) in a matter of days. We had just about 2 days to sort out our roles in the project, come up with a solid project plan and endure the execution amidst some surprises woven into the simulation. The team worked together brilliantly as we all put in our best. The visual management on the wall removed the centrality of one person (the person in front of the screen) controlling the plan and helped us to work as a team. And this was clearly reflected in the results - a 12.5% profit and completion of the project on schedule - best in the stream and third best in the cohort!