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Several of the links in the previous posts and on this one and on the upcoming ones refer to Lean/Agile in Software Development.
Software Development is knowledge work, which is not repetitive,
contains a lot of variability and shares several other similarities with Creative/VFX
Projects
Visual Effects is a Risky business, composed of complex projects with high degrees of uncertainty.
Our challenge is to thrive in this Complex Industry, which is very challenging during these uncertain Times with Lower Budgets and Timeframes.
But How?
The current management methodologies simple don't cope with the complexity of Visual Effects Projects.
This means that even though we seem to be doing everything right, or as everyone else is doing, we end up facing several inevitable issues.
Visual Effects is a Risky business, composed of complex projects with high degrees of uncertainty.
Our challenge is to thrive in this Complex Industry, which is very challenging during these uncertain Times with Lower Budgets and Timeframes.
But How?
The current management methodologies simple don't cope with the complexity of Visual Effects Projects.
This means that even though we seem to be doing everything right, or as everyone else is doing, we end up facing several inevitable issues.
There are Studios that are currently doing well but it would also be interesting for them to evaluate other management models that allow them to get better everyday.
Since we work with a Visual medium let's start by using Visualization allied to Lean/Agile principles to deliver high quality imagery, make money and have fun!
I used these principles in several VFX projects achieving strong positive
results in quality, productivity and team engagement.
Visualizing the Work in Progress is the first step for Visual
Management.
As Tom Wujec from Autodesk details below in his TED Presentation on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFA8n7goio&feature=youtube_gdata_player
No wonder they say: "a picture if worth a thousand words."
Of course just Visualizing the Shots on a Wall isn't enough.
And this is where the Lean/Agile principles come into the Game providing great benefits to the Companies that are able to implement and maintain them. As you will notice these principles and methods are relatively simple, many are actually counter intuitive and the hard part is to stick with them when times are tough in order to benefit from them in the mid to long term.
Successful Companies that apply some of these Principles:
Southwest Airlines - Services
Dell - Manufacturing
Toyota - Product Development
Pixar - Creative Industry
By Visualizing the Flow of Work through the different stages from Arrival to Final delivery, team members (executives, supervisors, producers, artists, project stakeholders, etc..) are able to achieve a level of transparency to the project that promotes several benefits such as stronger collaboration and support for better decision making.
Usually this is hard to do when the work is “hidden” inside Systems, Spreadsheets in the head of specific team members or other places where the work is not easily displayed and is not really constantly irradiating information to the whole team.
This can be achieved by using Physical Boards or Digital Boards with large screens.
As Tom Wujec from Autodesk details below in his TED Presentation on 3 ways the brain creates meaning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFA8n7goio&feature=youtube_gdata_player
No wonder they say: "a picture if worth a thousand words."
Of course just Visualizing the Shots on a Wall isn't enough.
And this is where the Lean/Agile principles come into the Game providing great benefits to the Companies that are able to implement and maintain them. As you will notice these principles and methods are relatively simple, many are actually counter intuitive and the hard part is to stick with them when times are tough in order to benefit from them in the mid to long term.
Successful Companies that apply some of these Principles:
Southwest Airlines - Services
Dell - Manufacturing
Toyota - Product Development
Pixar - Creative Industry
By Visualizing the Flow of Work through the different stages from Arrival to Final delivery, team members (executives, supervisors, producers, artists, project stakeholders, etc..) are able to achieve a level of transparency to the project that promotes several benefits such as stronger collaboration and support for better decision making.
Usually this is hard to do when the work is “hidden” inside Systems, Spreadsheets in the head of specific team members or other places where the work is not easily displayed and is not really constantly irradiating information to the whole team.
Visualizing and analysing the work flowing thru the different stages
allows the team to start managing queues resulting from the amount of work in
progress in specific stages at any given time, instead of managing timelines as
the ones found in Gantt Charts, which are hard to maintain ad keep up to
date.
The more granular these timelines and schedules are the more you will spend time updating them due to unexpected changes that will always happen in projects. Due to the high variability of work, as found in Visual Effects Projects, these timelines become so hard to keep up to date that you end up ingoring them at some point during the production schedule. Or you end up creating an overhead on the team only to try and keep these Timelines up to date.
The more granular these timelines and schedules are the more you will spend time updating them due to unexpected changes that will always happen in projects. Due to the high variability of work, as found in Visual Effects Projects, these timelines become so hard to keep up to date that you end up ingoring them at some point during the production schedule. Or you end up creating an overhead on the team only to try and keep these Timelines up to date.
Creating Timelines/Gantt Charts at the start of a project can be useful
and most of the clients will require one.
But once the Work enters the Studio we should change our focus from
viewing People and Timelines to visualizing the Flow of Work thru the different
stages, the bottlenecks that are forming and the impediments that need to be
removed until the work is approved and delivered.
Once we start Visualizing the Flow of Work (Design) in Progress thru these stages we can then move to the next principle which is to Reduce the Amount of Work in Progress (WIP).
This will be covered on the next Post - Limit Work in Progress.
Best Rgds!
Francisco Lima
Visual Effects Supervisor.
Once we start Visualizing the Flow of Work (Design) in Progress thru these stages we can then move to the next principle which is to Reduce the Amount of Work in Progress (WIP).
This will be covered on the next Post - Limit Work in Progress.
Best Rgds!
Francisco Lima
Visual Effects Supervisor.
I absolutely agree with Francisco on this, I remember him applying this on a project at a company we were both supervising at.
ReplyDeleteIt all boils down to communication and visualising that communication for everyone and anyone to get it instantly... there are still problems of people not wanting to try new things out and would rather increase their data input workload because they are use to it... VFX projects are getting more and more demanding dealing with huge amount of data on a tight schedule, so its important to look into ways of managing this using systems / workflow francisco has mentioned above.