Page 114 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Point and call your way to IT Project success? Aka do what works for you

An IT Project Management friend returned from a
holiday in Japan with an unusual souvenir that he is
applying to his work.
Pretty much whenever Malc does anything he says out
loud what it is that he is doing. It’s called “pointing and
calling” apparently. It is quite intriguing to watch.
“I’m communicating a scope change on Slack,” he might
say as he points at the screen or, “I’m updating the
stakeholder communications matrix.” At first, you think
that he’s gone mad, talking to himself, but he swears
that it has cut errors and increased his awareness about
the status of his projects.
Great track record

The idea comes from riding the Japanese railways.

If you’ve ever caught a train in Tokyo, or seen one on the TV, chances are you’ll have seen a white
gloved railway employee, smartly dressed in their perfectly ironed uniform, pointing down the
platform and calling out, apparently to themselves! It’s the same with the drivers and train
managers, each push of a button, each turn of a dial, each check of a screen is accompanied by a
vocal commentary.
Japan’s rail system is rightly considered among the very best in the world. I mean, you think of the
origins of high-speed rail travel and you think of the bullet train and rail enthusiasts will tell you that
it is amongst the safest on the planet. Which is amazing considering the extensive network of high-
speed tracks, the something like 12 billion passengers a year, and the fact that ‘on-time’ isn’t
measured in minutes, like on British Railways, but in seconds. With metrics that demand high
performance come huge pressure and a risk of getting things wrong – but in Japan, fewer things
seem to go wrong.
Fewer errors

Like in an IT Project, processes are only as good as the people running them, and ultimately, results
are achievable through the daily actions of a team. It’s the same on the Japanese railways, the
people, train managers, drivers and station staff, play a pivotal role. And it’s what they do that
makes the real difference - the safe and efficient operation of the railways in Japan can be attributed
to the vocal calls and physical pointing. It looks silly, but it is a system that has reduced workplace
errors by up to 85%. Accidents were reduced by 30%.

When you’re running so many trains, so fast, and with such little room for failure, these are not
marginal gains! Imagine for a moment your IT Portfolio with 85% fewer errors. Suddenly Malc
doesn’t seem quite so mad (still mad, just not quite so mad).

Coordinate brain, hands, eyes and mouth

The system is known as shisa kanko in Japanese, and pointing-and-calling works on the idea of
associating the task you are doing with a verbal call (so, a driver might say, “speed check 80”) and a