The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - The Effectiveness of P.O.S.T. Planning for Incident and Project Managers | PPP #52

Episode Date: September 27, 2020

Sharing some knowledge from Larry C. Miller, Chief Deputy, LA County Fire (retired), about using the P.O.S.T. planning process for All-Hazards Incident Management and the parallels to Project Management.

All emergency response and battlefield commanders realize that the emergency is likely to grow or worsen until tactics, boots on the ground that is, are applied. However, history also has shown that the improper use and application of tactical resources can lead to increased loss of life and property and sustained human misery. Identification of incident objectives and identifying corresponding strategies is essential to the selection of the proper tactic. This outstanding summary statement is from Larry C. Miller, who was chief deputy of Los Angeles County Fire Department, retired, and also the author of They Called Me Doc, Treating Wounded Marines Wasn't Just a Job, It Was a Passion. I, in 2013, was extremely fortunate to have been taught the Ground 0-305 all-hazard incident management course by Larry. Fantastic instructor between his experience as a hospital corpsman in Vietnam,

then for many years with Los Angeles County Fire Department, helping develop the incident command system, and then continuing to teach folks like myself and others how to get started in this business and really how to, which we'll focus on today simplify the process make the process work for you and Larry certainly did that with his write-up all hazards incident objectives made easy and so we'll use some of that information and walk through the post process on this episode 52 posts for incident and project managers. Thanks again for coming back. And what is post you say? Well, post is priorities, objectives, strategies, and tactics. And so in this episode, we are going to talk about how,

whether you're an incident commander, planning section chief or operations section chief, or on the project side, you're a sponsor or project manager, how can we look at our processes as we like to do here, simplify them, tease out what we need, and just talk through this concept. This POST concept is from the National Incident Management System, which is the guide, right? It's not a prescribed thing, but it's the guide that contains the incident command system and other information that when I was on an incident management team or doing public health emergency coordination or response for the state and then even in healthcare and some of the concepts I use now as project managers that we've talked about here, it is the kind of guide, the National Incident Management System that

encompasses all those kind of things. It's kind of like the project management body of knowledge, but for incident command system, public safety, public health folks that do that kind of response. So I'm going to go through each of the letters in the acronym posts, and we'll talk about first the priority, and we'll talk about first the incident management and public safety aspect with some guidance from Larry and some of my two cents, and then the project management aspect because this document from Larry, which is outstanding, right? It's a way to have some objectives ready to go, because that's quite a challenge for people, right? Whether you're an experienced incident commander or a new one, is how do I set these objectives that set the tone for the whole team,

for the whole operation, or for a project, right? If I'm a PM or a sponsor, according to the book, the sponsor is supposed to make the objectives and set those kind of things. So how do we do that? So Larry's guidance and really guidance, he just reiterates in this document, but if you've been in public safety ever, and you've been exposed to that or the incident command system, it's life safety, incident stabilization, and property conservation. So the first thing we need to do for priorities is save lives, whether it's stop a bad guy that's shooting people, stop the bleeding from a person, whatever it is, we're focused on life safety, get put the fire out, those kinds of things. Incident stabilization,

stop the fire spread, stop the bleeding again, it's kind of a double use there. But basically make the incident or the response or even the event, if you're using this for that, not get worse. And then property conservation and environment, and environment is a big thing is we don't want to bust up someone's whole house and overhaul, which is where we make sure that the fire hasn't spread after a fire if we only have it contained in the kitchen and it's not in the living room, we're not going to just bust out walls at random places. So those kinds of things. And for a project, similarly, there's kind of these big three, and then the extra fourth one. So there's scope, right? What is within the boundaries of what

we're doing for this project? So priority wise for a project, what's the scope? What's the schedule, right? We got to have some kind of schedule, whether you're doing a waterfall, this, this, then that, whether you're agile, kind of doing sprints a week or two at a time, however you're going to do that. And then the cost, right? Money, because nobody has endless amounts of it. Most nobody. There's some folks that seem like they do these days, huh? And then an additional one is quality, right? So we can have no scope creep. We can be on schedule. We can be under budget, but our quality can be super poor. So the priority on the project should include quality. And so we'll get into kind of some of those, how that works, but pretty good correlation, different focus, right? Between public safety and incident management

focused on that life safety, on that response, on stabilizing things, not letting them get worse on conserving property, but you're doing similar work like that in a project. So you may not be directly, you know, putting pressure on a wound, literal blood coming from somebody, but you could be putting a virtual dressing that is stopping loss of productivity through improving a process as a project. So there's some correlation there. So let's look at the objectives. We've talked about objectives. If you're in project management, you've been in incident management, objectives are a critical part of it. I'm a huge fan of them. The foundational for the first step in that is to develop smart objectives.

Same exact thing for the public safety model so that O in POST is objectives. Of course they should be smart. And we get some great guidance from Larry here too because he says from his experience and what he's seen with some exceptions as he states, there's about six categories that all hazards, incidents, problems, issues, limitations, with a few exceptions could fall into. And so those are, and these will then lead into development or help us develop objectives. These are responders, right? Taking care of our people. So that is always the number one priority is our responders. The next priority, number two is the public. So we're keeping our people safe.

We're looking out for the public. That's who we're here for to respond in the incident command system, public safety. And then there is cop stuff, right? Civil order, get the bad guys, those kind of things. Number four, then there's fire stuff. So that's removing hazards, hazardous materials, hazardous environments, those kind of things, keeping us safe from that. Number five, public works stuff. So infrastructure, utilities, those kind of things, keeping us safe from that. Number five, public works stuff.

So infrastructure, utilities, those kind of things. So public works, public utilities. And then there are, number six, the agency administrator, stakeholder, political issues. So those overarching things. We're going to have fiscal responsibility throughout the operational period, those kind of things. from Larry Miller, responders, the public, cop stuff, fire stuff, public works, public utilities stuff, and those leadership-like problems, issues, or limitations. So those are kind of the categories that he puts them in.

On a project team, what's that mirror image look like outside of the public safety or incident management world? Or if you're doing a project and you happen to be a public safety, public, private sector, either one, to me, the first thing is our project team, right? We have gathered folks we may or may not know that don't work for us as project managers, and they're our first priority. How are they doing? How are we gelling? Are we still forming and storming or norming all that kind of stuff? But how's the team doing? Especially these days, we need to check on each other and see how everyone's doing. Who's totally stressed out? I know I'm feeling the

stress. I'm sure a lot of you are as well. So let's check on each other, not just with a smile and, well, it's another day. That's a sign, right? So let's keep doing that. Number two is the business owner. So to me, that's kind of our public, as you say, for the project teams. Those are the folks that we're doing the project for to improve a process, put a new product in place, device, et cetera. The cop stuff equivalent to me, number three, especially in the IT field is information security. They're going to proactively keep us safe from intrusion on our networks and our systems. They're going to advise us on the best way to set up accounts, all those kinds of things. So a little focus here on the IT project management, you could apply that,

what's an equivalent of a security type force or structure. The fourth for me equivalent to the fire stuff is our QA and testing. So these are the folks that are going to let us know what's hazardous in the way we designed a system or a workflow. They're going to test it out for us, help us break it, help us fix it, those kind of things. Public works and utilities equivalent to me in the information technology project world is our networking folks, our platform services or servers folks, the folks that do hardware power,

those kind of things, right? Without them, we can't send data internally or externally, we can't host data, just a huge factor. Run systems folks can't work if they don't have their hardware or power. Obviously, that host data. Just a huge factor. Run systems, folks can't work if they don't have their hardware or power. Obviously, that's kind of a big one. And a pretty direct equivalent, I think, to the number six category of problems or issues or anything that Larry Miller talks about from the agency administrator standpoint on the incident command side, on the project side, is your sponsors and your steering committee, right? So there's going to

be guidance or there is guidance from the organization and from them that something is going to come up or be related to at some point in the project. Having walked through some of those categories, let's get specific with some of these objectives. And again, as Larry says, as I've said, this is your system, make it work for you. There's no cookie cutter solution. So this and all the other guides are just that, they're guides to give you information, your experience to do that. And then you can shore those up. So an example of an object, an objective that has to do with the responders is provide for the safety, health, welfare, and security of responders. I've seen that probably almost word for word on many

incident action plans for a project. It could be, we're going to form multi, um,ine team to perform the duties of this project throughout the project lifecycle or something like that, right? It's super basic, but it focuses on our people. And instead of safety, we could almost do the same thing in a project aspect, right? Provide for the safety, health, and welfare. If you're doing a construction project, that's pretty relevant to a project. First thing we should do is make sure everybody's safe on site, right? That's that I think makes total sense. Then we look at similar for kind of a second example for the public facing very similar, right provide for the same kind of stuff, safety, health, welfare for them. And then there's some examples in there about the different kinds

of things of, you know, outbreaks, mass fatalities, those kind of things. And so you can get specific with really what you're trying to provide to the public. And for me, for our business owners, you know, a similar sample objective could be, we are going to provide a new process to whatever department with it, you know, throughout the lifecycle of this or by the end of the project or something like that. But you know, whether it's a workflow, it's a device, it's a product, something like that, but what are you going to provide could be one of the objectives that everybody's working under to always know kind of what, and that leads to our scope, right, that we'll get to a little bit later. Security-wise, kind of the equivalent of the cop stuff, right, or the safety stuff.

We're going to comply with all information security guidelines and policies, et cetera, et cetera. And you can kind of wordsmith that out as equivalent to like the sample that's maintained civil order, security investigations, those kinds of things throughout their operational period or by a set date, depends on how you, how you want to word that. The fire stuff. So this has to do with that hazard area, right? Is, you know, search and rescue, public contain, control, mitigate, suppress all hazards. And then again, you can add time in some of these, you can shore up some of the words in there. You know, for testing, we're going to make sure that we plan for, create and execute a robust quality assurance and testing plan, blah, blah, blah. So you can kind of get the gist. If you're

in incident management, incident command, Larry's provided this great guidance. And there's, you know, if it's some of these categories, then you provided this great guidance, and there's, you know, if it's some of these categories, then you can insert words here, change them out, you know, kind of do that. The fifth example, so this was the Public Works equivalent on the Innocent Command side for project managers. We're gonna coordinate all infrastructure needs with whatever groups, you know,

or ensure the stability of the network prior to placement of devices, something like that, right? So what's something that has to do with the infrastructure that your project is going to affect, make better, add on to, something like that. This last one, agency administrator-wise, number six, ensure compliance with agency administrator, et cetera. You could almost one-for-one that, right? Ensure compliance. So that's one thing that's hard too that I've gotten feedback on is on objectives. Can you can, you really ensure something, can you ensure that you're doing it and that everyone on your team is going to because Murphy's law, people act different. I'm not sure. So you could say you're going to follow all guides and policies set forth or the

guidance provided by on the incident command side, agency administrator on the project side, the sponsor and their steering committee, et cetera. So you can see kind of a really quick exercise, looking at some of those examples, some of those categories for incident command. And I think that really, if you can go in the mindset, if you're an incident commander, or ops chief, or plans working to help develop those objectives, or know those categories, or you're responding, you you know between those different areas for our folks the public cop stuff fire stuff public works agency admins and leadership on the project side you can make sure you're taking care of looking at your project team your business

owners your information security quality and testing network servers power that kind of stuff and then you're steering committing your sponsors then you're in a pretty good spot to be able to capture a whole bunch of other stuff within the methodologies, right? Between whatever forms you use or all that kind of stuff. So we've gone over the P for priority. We have done some examples for O objectives in this post model from NIMS, right? There's a good way, good kind of planning order of operations here. And so now strategies. And so these not a ton of examples going to do here, but just, you know, it's a general plan. It's like a one to two word statement of what, like, what are we going to do? So, so quick, non kind of tactical strategy focused on

that, that administrative agency administrator piece is, you know, if we have an objective that says we're going to follow all guidance and, and by or delegations of authority set by the agency administrator, et cetera, et cetera, for our objective, our strategy is we're going to create a policy group or we're going to gather leaders or we're going to meet or something, right? It leads us down the road to the tactics when we're going to ask for specific people to do specific things in specific places. To me, project-wise is equivalent to a very early charter, right? Hey, we have some objectives. We have a super high level schedule.

We kind of might know what resources, at least by ability, not necessarily name yet. And if you're maybe you're doing a level of effort estimate, if you have an idea of, hey, we think it's going to be these kind of resource types with kind of this much hours put in, then you can maybe do that as part of your strategy to then know what you actually have to ask for or the meetings you need to set up after that. And that could be part of for the incident command system to strategy is to meet the objectives and work toward the prioritized work. We need to set up a particular cadence of meetings or the operational periods of those kinds of things. And we'll get into the details of that for sure, again,

in tactics. And we're not going to go deep into tactics in this episode. But to that, that's the next thing in post, right? So we've got our priorities, we've talked about objectives, we have some strategies, and then we have these tactics. So that's when we get into the real nitty gritty that operation section chief is going to take action on those objectives with planning and logistics and safety and the resource unit and figure out what are the people and the stuff we need. And for me, a kind of summary of when we get into tactics on the incident command system and incident management is it's the people and stuff to align with priorities, plan towards

set objectives and put strategies into action, right? So this is when we use that big wall chart, the Incident Command System 215, the Operational Planning Worksheet. This is right next to it when safety is in 215A, the safety analysis. And so hand-in-hand, we're working through and meeting the objectives

and carrying out some of the strategy thoughts and really making things happen. And so there's so many different tactics to get into. In other episodes, I'll share kind of, you know, the foundational four of specific events and those kinds of things. But for now, that's kind of the broad statement, we're going to really get into getting the number of people, the number of things, where they're going to show up, how long they're going to work, what equipment they need, but really down to the boots on the ground. And the project management space, this is where we get into that project management plan. If we're going with a traditional project management body of knowledge kind of thing, and really honing in on what are our technical requirements

or operational requirements, or what's our workflow we're improving, or whatever we're looking at, what's our scope document look like. And so that's where we're going to get into, here's the exact amount of money we have to spend, here's how we're going to get into. Here's the exact amount of money we have to spend. Here's how we're going to track it. Here's the names of the resources that we have. Here's a lot of the other really detailed information that we need to carry out this project. So what information can we all use or need to then have as key takeaways from some of this? I hope it was a very quick kind of overview. Look up the resource. I've seen copies available on fire engineering of Larry C. Miller's All Hazard Incident Objectives Made Easy. Check out his book, They Call Me Doc. But to me, some quick

takeaways from this and incident management and project management in general is, again, it's your system. So make it work for you, whether it's a project, whether it's the incident command system. It's not a rigid. You have to do it like this. There's some great guidance and maybe your organization sets that tone. But really, they're concepts and it's knowledge and it's tools to use to make, you know, folks work together to hear. I'm going to do it to bring people together in common process to make progress. Right. That's what all these things do.

And when you get more experience, as you work a bit more, as you realize what you want to pick from each book, from each methodology and blend it, whatever discipline you're in, simplify the process, right? Don't get paralysis by analysis from sitting there and going, well, we have to do these 10 steps before we can do those 10 steps. And if that's stopping the project, if it's not helping the quality, if it's making people unsafe and incident command, then for sure, it's not what we want to be doing. Right. And what I would say, I think is a good key takeaway, and I hope it is for you all too, is post or this prioritize objective strategies and tactics applies across all disciplines, right? It's a matter of what's

the focus of each of these, you know, between life safety or money saving, or the objectives are pretty much the same. It's just different categories we're focused on. How do we carry out these strategies? And at what stage of whatever process we're using, do we start to develop these and those tactics when we really get into what's the spend? What's the number of people? What's the number of stuff, but it's a quick thing to remember that post acronym too. So if you're stuck, if you're brand new in project management, if you're new in incident management or incident command, think about that, right? That's kind of another acronym four steps, just like that foundational four that I'm a big advocate of the objectives or chart resources and communication, and communication, and then five, adding on the leader's intent.

So we all kind of work towards that. So my intent with this podcast is to share my and other people's knowledge and experiences to help you avoid pitfalls, to just share this process, right? Good process brings people together. people of course are what it's all about. So I hope all of you people that are listening are safe. I hope you are washing your hands and I wish you all Godspeed.