I don’t just live and think PLM, I also coach a competitive age group swim team. We are part of the USA Swimming development program. USA Swimming is the national governing body for swimming from age group (our team) to the Olympic Team.
A saying that is used by many coaches, regardless of sport, and one that I have posted in the pool area is “You earn your ribbons and medals at practice. You pick them up at competitions!”
There are highly committed members of the team that attend nearly every practice, work hard and pay attention when they are there. There are some that come with regularity, but don’t really train with much fidelity. The third group is those that come infrequently and/or often sit out much of the training sets. There is a fourth group that come infrequently, but only because they are also engaged in other sports and activities. They have too many other commitments to dedicate themselves fully to their swim training.
When we compete in swim meets, the largest contingent of swimmers that enter are those from the committed group. There are always a few from the latter groups that will enter a meet. When the swimmers in the first group make new PRs (personal records) and win awards, the latter groups often do not. They (and their parents) blame the training regime itself and spotty attendance or lack luster efforts in practice have little to do with the poor showing. The fourth group does not blame the training regime being generally high performers but realizing they’ve spread their effort and time across multiple activities and this impacts their competitive performance at meets.
What does any of this have to do with PLM? Well, it’s just this: Having the time and having the commitment to perform the various training and exercises with the fidelity that is required is key to successful performance.
Whether it is a brand new implementation of a PLM tool from scratch, upgrading to a new version of an existing tool or adding a new module or function, there is a team that will design and develop the configuration of the tool to meet the requirements and produce the desired outcomes. The team is made up of many different members, many of whom are users and contributors to the PLM system in their daily job and have been recruited for the PLM implementation or upgrade project.
Developing and testing a PLM system is an involved process. The testing of the various functionalities to ensure the desired outcome is something that takes time and commitment to the fidelity of the test. This is where PLM system development is like the swim team. If the effort and time are not committed, the awards (milestones) may not be satisfactorily achieved. CRP (conference room pilot), UAT (user acceptance testing) and even final go live can all fail to yield the desired results.
In a high performing enterprise, the members assigned to a PLM implementation team are generally competent and committed professionals. The team members on a PLM project that are users and contributors in PLM have other job responsibilities. They are by habit and personality driven to work hard and perform at a high level in their regular job function.
Because these PLM members often come from the very design and development teams that the enterprise is hoping to leverage, they often come to the PLM project with other assignments and deadlines outside the PLM implementation. If efforts are not made to clear their schedule and workload to allow for the needed commitment of time and effort, the performance of the member(s) and team will not really be up to expectations. Like the results achieved by this forth group of athletes at competitions, milestones may be met and the PLM project moved forward, but often the outcomes are not quite as desired.
If the time is not made available to the team members to allow them to focus sufficiently on the PLM testing and development the final solution may be lacking. The outcomes produced will often be less satisfactory and in the end acceptance and use of the system when it reaches production status will suffer.
Project managers and team leaders need to realize that when they assign someone to be on a PLM project development and testing team they need to clear the schedule so the effort and time required can actually be given to the PLM project. By enabling the team member to perform at a high level they are ensuring the PLM project and team will achieve their goals. The awards will be successfully met milestones that demonstrate desired outcomes in the PLM system and high rates of end user satisfaction and acceptance when in production.
