Al Gray

Category Archives: ALIM

Strategy – Ready, Aim, Fire

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Ready, Aim, Fire

Seems logical. You set some goals, plan how you’re going to reach those goals, then pull the trigger on execution. And it is logical as long as you’re dealing with known quantities. You know…you’ve done this type of project before and have a pretty good ideal of what it takes to be successful, both internally and externally. To be successful, the goals have to be reasonable and the stake-holders need a good grasp of the success criteria. But if you’re stepping into some uncharted territory, the strategy could be more wishful thinking and there’s a risk of over-planning when you in fact have a lot of unknowns. Ahww…who cares…we can always blame the people responsible for execution!

Can you think about strategy too much?

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A good percentage of the posts here touch on the topic of thinking. But can you “over-think”?

Ok…I’m going to carefully step out on a slippery slope here and try to find a balance. On the one hand, we can labor overt what our strategy should be, and spend so much time honing it that we never actually get into the execution phase…or miss the window that would have produced the most fruit from execution.

My observation is that organizations and individual leaders tend to fall into four categories when it comes to finding a balance between planning and execution. I’ll use a metaphor to explore this. BTW…ALL metaphors break down at some point, and I can quickly point out how the one I’m going to use does, so don’t get too wrapped up in the metaphor itself.

For our purposes here, “Ready” = Strategy Development, “Aim” = Planning, and “Fire” = Execution

  • Ready, Aim, Fire
  • Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim
  • Ready, Fire, Aim
  • Fire, Fire, Fire

We’ll explore each in subsequent posts, but a hint about where I’m going can be found in the following quote…paraphrased from a conversation with Paul Marshall, Vice President, Bentley Systems, Inc…

“A (B) Strategy with an (A) Execution will beat an (A) strategy with a (B) Execution everytime.”

Horses for Courses

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1.   “Horses for Courses”

One could write a letter with Microsoft Excel or calculate a table with Microsoft Word, but both are designed for particular purposes. The same is true for systems that were designed for engineering information management from the ground up, verses systems that are designed for simple office document management. The best in class tools should be used for each requirement.

Research shows that for every author of engineering content there are can be as many as 20 consumers. However, few of these consumers are users of engineering-design and CAD-drafting tools. Many spend much of their working day using other tools to access other file types in a different information management environment.

This is why ProjectWise has been designed to compliment, rather than compete with, other information and document management systems not designed specifically for engineering content management. ProjectWise can be configured, through the use of “connectors”, to be integrated with the corporate EDMS to provide engineering content in the formats most valuable to the users of that system. This is different from third party add-ons to EDMS systems in that the engineering group can leverage the full capability of an engineering content management system, yet the system can be integrated through the use of a connector. Benefits of this approach are:

  • The connector approach makes upgrading either the EDMS or ProjectWise much easier
  • Through server side processes, complex content can be automatically distilled down to a single document that the EDMS is able to manage
  • Engineering content can be rendered and pushed into the EDMS in a format (such as PDF) that is accessible to the users of that system
  • This approach allows EDMS systems that are used for document control or records management LINK TO SOMETHING ABOUT eB to be used to manage information pushed to them from the engineering system, automatically, at appropriate milestones