Lessons in Project Management from the Farm

Owning and operating a farm of any size requires the ability to effectively manage many resources, skills, and conditions at the same time. In fact, farm life requires high-standards of performance, the ability to plan for the future, as well preparation for weather and environmental challenges.  

In many ways, the same skills for running a farm translate very well into the programmatic challenges faced when running groups of related  government technology projects. 

These were the key themes of a recent Makpar Knowledge Share presentation from Dan Montagna, PMO Manager at Makpar. Dan actually owns what he calls a “micro-farm,” which is a ½ acre in size with chickens, gardens, vineyards, a bamboo grove and orchards(fruit, nut and maple trees for making maple syrup).  

Makpar’s project management approach is based on a combination of Waterfall and Agile techniques, where we scale the methodology to meet the need of the project. Regardless of the methodology, the essential elements to project success can often be distilled to a series of inputs, outputs, and highly effective resource management. 

Dan applies these project management principles when running many aspects of his micro-farm. For example, he uses Lean Agile techniques for reducing waste where many artifacts can be recycled or re-used, much like the use of good templates, documentation and code on technical projects, or even consistently looking for areas to further reduce wasted time, and materials. 

On a recent trenching project, he focused on resource management, compliance (local ordinances and licensing), quality assurance and control, and project closure for gaining lessons learned. Risk management was also essential in calculating risks, ensuring safety, and making on-the-fly-changes to stay agile against schedule. 

When putting up a new fence, Dan used key planning metrics and KPIs, and quality management, for ensuring that the fence was straight, level in multiple dimensions, and secure. In fact, quality management planning is applied in several areas of the micro-farm, from soil testing and ground levelling, to determining adjustments to which plantings are successful and how to increase yields. 

For managing his three chickens, he uses what he calls chicken personnel management, as well as security best practices, egg production control processes, stakeholder management, and even scrum ceremonies each morning with the chickens to “check-in” on progress and ensure the team is ok and has no significant “blockers.”  

More specifically around the eggs that are produced, Dan notes that prototyping during the first stages of egg production was completed as the chickens began laying. He also uses regular quality assurance testing for ensuring that the eggs he prepares are of the highest quality.  

Finally, he uses professional development and training for teaching his chickens where they should lay their eggs. To achieve this, he placed golf balls in each nesting box in his chicken coop, allowing the chickens to visualize where they should lay their eggs, and train them to not peck the eggs, thereby preventing product damage. 

Overall, Dan ran a lessons learned of performance to analyze what went well and what could have gone better for every aspect of managing his farm. His philosophy is to embrace the wins and understand the failures – it’s all about continuous improvement! Dan has also put a five-year plan in place for a wide-range of farm improvement projects to iteratively approach future builds 

We would like to thank Dan for providing the creative inspiration for this blog post! Please click here to learn more about Makpar’s specialized project management approaches.