The Lichtig Score (Project Teams)

Occasionally I would like to present what others are saying on topics of interest to me. These topics may become sidebars in the book. (Yes, for those new to this Blog, I am writing a book - that is the point of all this.) Here is a bit about something I read this week.
...Geoff

Will Lichtig, an attorney who specialises in construction projects, recently wrote an article called 'Projects as Patients: What Can We Learn from the Medical Profession?' (the original is at projects as patients - in the American Institute of Architect's journal Practice Management Digest). In this article Will is concerned about construction projects' failure to keep pace with the increases in productivity elsewhere in the economy, and their failure to keep people safe. He calls projects 'temporary social organisations', and proposes a project management equivalent of the Apgar score given to newborn babies. He believe we should closely examine five aspects of projects: collaborative planning; reliable promising; unaccounted-for foreseeable issues; safety; and project mood (or team spirit). You can give a 0, 1 or 2 to a project on each aspect - see Will's article to find out what each rating represents. Alan Mossman, posting on the Blog Reforming Project Management calls Will's system the Lichtig Score.

I am impressed with the apparent simplicity of this rating system, as it has the potential to provide the tools to substantially improve the experience of people on project teams, while improving our chances of achieving our project objectives.

I suggest that you try this system out on a project you are familiar with. I then suggest that you apply another deceptively simple approach to understanding the causes of both excellent and appalling ratings - the 5 whys approach - ask 'Why?' five times to get to the bottom of what we are doing both right and wrong.

Then you will need to have the courage to share your findings.