Episode 110 – A Project Story – Pivot without Mercy

Many project managers are currently having to pivot, shift, change plans, and start over due to the coronavirus pandemic. John Houser shares his story about wrapping up an adoption of a Scaled Agile Framework(SAFe)just as COVID-19 started to impact their operations at Spectrum Healthcare.



Table of
Contents



00:48 … Meet John 02:10 … Spectrum Healthcare Partners 03:05 … Scaled Agile Framework – SAFe 05:18 … Implementing SAFe at Spectrum 09:42 … COVID-19 Impact on SAFe Process 11:10 … Challenges the Team Faced 12:34 … Communication Tools 14:29 … Shifting Priorities – Pivot without Mercy 16:25 … Team’s Reaction to Pivoting 17:28 … How SAFe Helped to Manage Projects 18:57 … Conducting the System Demo 22:35 … Unexpected Projects due to COVID-19 24:54 … Keeping up Morale in Remote Working 26:08 … Twice Daily Stand-Up Team Meetings 27:58 … Biggest Surprise 28:28 … Leadership Tools on the Tool Belt 29:28 … Lessons Learned 32:42 … Closing



JOHN HOUSER:  ...change
is okay.  Don’t be worried about it.  You may not know all the answers, but with
that support you’ll absolutely get there.



WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome
to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me is Bill Yates.



So particularly with COVID-19 still hovering around, many of you will have interesting stories about how your projects have been impacted, and we’d really like to hear from you.  If you have a noteworthy story, please email me at manage_this@velociteach.com and tell us about your COVID-19 project story. So that’s exactly what we’re bringing to you today; aren’t we, Bill.



BILL YATES:  Yes, I can’t wait to hear from John Houser.  So many project managers are having to pivot, shift, crumble up plans, throw them away, and start over, and John is going to walk us through an example with his company.  I can’t wait to dig into the details.



Meet John



WENDY GROUNDS:  John Houser is the Director of Project Management at Spectrum Healthcare Partners, so he has over 25 years of project management experience.  John, welcome to Manage This, thank you so much for joining us today.



JOHN HOUSER:  Glad to
be here.



WENDY GROUNDS:  We want
to hear your story, how you came to be a project manager.



JOHN HOUSER:  Sure, so I liked watching other people run projects, I think that’s where it happened, or where the light went off the first time, and how they were able to put things together, look at this as like a Rube Goldberg machine almost, where you’ve got these different people, these different tasks, these different objectives.  And somehow they’re able to weave it all together and create this beautiful-looking plan and then end up with a deliverable at the end, and so that’s what really intrigued me.  When I was younger I would do a lot of those machines, so how you put it all together is what really got me into it and got me exited.



BILL YATES:  That’s pretty cool, so that it’s a little bit of engineering, and it’s a little bit of teamwork that just appealed to you.  I get that.  Same kind of thing, so I mean, that’s one of the beauties for this podcast for me has been seeing some of the just amazing things that project managers have done, you know, men and women have accomplished because they put together a team and went out and did it.  I never thought about that comparison to the machine, though, so that’s great.



JOHN HOUSER:  Yeah,
demented mind, misspent youth, I don’t know.



Spectrum Healthcare
Partners



WENDY GROUNDS:  Can
you tell us a little bit about Spectrum Healthcare Partners, the company that
you work for?



JOHN HOUSER:  Yeah, sure.  So Spectrum Healthcare Partners is primarily owned by physicians, physicians that got together from their practices and really wanted to get that economies of scale  that you get.  When you have your practice, you don’t need three of these type of people or four of those people.  More back office, and to really get that leverage or that buying po...