Work Management
Managing work is different from managing practices. Managing practices means focusing on the methods (practices) used to create all work artifacts according to the 3x3 Table. You need to understand which practices are necessary, implement them within the organization, and monitor their relevance. In turn, managing work is built upon the foundation of managing practices.
Managing work (operation management or operations management) involves allocating resources to execute plans on time and within budget. Here, work stages appear, which, as you know, differ from logical phases where practices follow one another[1]. However, detailed planning for all stages is now rarely used, since life quickly brings changes. Only the upcoming stage is planned in detail, while all subsequent stages are considered with broad assumptions, because the situation will likely change significantly by the time work on those stages begins.
Managing practices is an engineering discipline, meaning you need a solid understanding of engineering work practices. Managing work, on the other hand, is a purely managerial discipline, requiring strong knowledge of operational management.
Managing work abstracts away from the engineering essence of operations—that is, from systems modeling, the results of which are generally presented in the 3x3 Table. All work within project activities or at the enterprise level is, in one way or another, connected to areas of interest.
Knowledge of how to perform the work is not particularly necessary for the operations manager. The manager’s goal is to achieve the fastest and most cost-effective completion of work in order to obtain the work artifact as defined by systems modeling. To do this, managerial methods are used. For example, if the productivity of a conveyor line is insufficient, the manager decides to add more machines. It does not matter to the manager what kind of processing the machine performs, or whether it could be done using another method or tool. The manager resolves the bottleneck using a managerial approach. However, finding a different practice to solve the same productivity problem falls under managing practices or an organizational development project, which is handled by the Chief Transformation Officer[2].
Managing work is a combination of different practices, such as project management, process management, and case management. Each practice is characterized by its own set of interests and a corresponding method for describing the flow of work. But they all share a main goal: to accelerate the flow of work while minimizing its cost.
Project management is up-front planning, which includes control points, resources, start and end times, productivity standards, and so on. For example, project management is well suited for building construction, when the design bureau has prepared the project documentation. The builders simply need to carry out the required work according to specific stages.
Process management involves uniform work—a typical sequence of steps that is usually determined not so much by a plan as by regulations. Process management can be used during the operation phase of the same building. Here, you can clearly see process-based work such as cleaning, garbage removal, scheduled maintenance, and so on.
Case management is a more modern way of managing work. A case is a situation, set of circumstances, or initiative that requires a set of actions to achieve a goal. It focuses on the subject to which actions are applied. For example, a person, a legal case, or an insurance claim. A case depends on the circumstances that arise, because it is impossible to plan all the work in advance. Case management is convenient to use during the ideation and design stages of the system life cycle, because it is difficult to plan at these stages, but the work still needs to be managed. Here, the case concept is especially helpful.
For example, first the wall is cleaned and plastered, and only then is it painted—not the other way around. ↩︎
Any problem can be addressed using engineering, managerial, or entrepreneurial practices. For example, you can change the way the work is done, add resources and performers, or choose not to solve this problem and focus on another. ↩︎