I’ve been teaching planning lately and once again it seems to me that the PDCA cycle – aka Shewhart or Deming cycle – is pretty much the core of all planning. Or rather, it is the basis for all mutli-pass planning – when iteration is allowed. (One-pass planning, big-up-front-design “BUFD”, is fine for trivial situations but alway has problems in complex situations.)
So, again I’m reminded of why I don’t like PDCA. Two reasons.
Adjust over Act
When the fourth step is labeled “Act” it fails to speak to me. “Act?” I ask, “Didn’t we just DO?” Easily fixed, label step-4 “Adjust” – many people do. Now it says, “Plan a bit, do a bit, check the results, now adjust the plan or the way you are working.” That makes more sense to me.
4 unequal steps
Secondly, the typical presentation – like my diagram above – makes it look like the four steps are equal and that is not the case. Just in terms of the time they take the fourth is almost always the shortest. Which of the other steps dominate is going to depend both on the planning culture where you are and the amount of work that needs doing.
Many places will put a lot of time and effort into planning. While this can entirely justified if you are building something that lives depend on, planning suffers from diminishing returns. It is often far better to plan a little, run around the circle and plan some more. Planning is learning but so is doing, you can learn more by a few minutes of doing than hours of planning.
Other places will skip planning altogether and launch into doing. While over-planning is problematic jumping straight in is also a problem. Either way, in terms of the PDCA cycle, planning is not an equal element.
Now when planning is skipped or rush the doing phase is going to expand. In fact, on a really big endeavour which needs a lot of planning the doing phase can also be very large. Of course, its entirely possible that your planning is so excellent that you see an quick way to deliver. But again, doing is not an equal quarter.
Test-fix-test-fix-test doom loop
The same does for the check (or test) phase. It can be long or short. If your planning was good, and your doing was quality then you can hope that the check phase is really small. It does happen. But too often there is little quality in planning so you actually end-up with a short-circuit as the checks fail and more doing is needed to fix things. (This is the test-fix-test cycle that can destroy any schedule.)
I wouldn’t expect Plan, Do and Check to be equal sizes, depending on your organisation, culture and the nature of the thing you are doing I would expect one to dominate.
But I don’t see that in Adjust. Adjust is the forgotten child. Indeed, in many projects, especially at the end, everything just goes hell for leather do-check-do-check-…. Adjust, and even planning, goes out the window.
Using PDCA successfully
Even in the best places Adjust is always going to be the shortest of the four. The irony is that it is probably the most important. It is the step where reflection and improvement happen.
The truth is I’ve always struggled to apply the PDCA cycle formally. But when I look back at almost every single engagement the actual work can be mapped to the PDCA. It is fundamental, whether building product, running sprints, setting and executing OKRs or almost any other non-trivial work. Its just that the steps are not equally time consuming or equally respected.
And the secret to making it work well? Simple, go around fast. A little planning, a little doing, quick check, small adjustments and go again. Learn in the planning, learn in the doing, learn all the way round and put that learning into action.