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Tag: Plan

OUTSIDE THE BOX Forum: On Changing Horses in Midstream

Written by Robert Wysocki on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on OUTSIDE THE BOX Forum: On Changing Horses in Midstream

We started out using Scrum but as we learned more about the solution we have had to adapt Scrum to the realities of the project and its environment.

After so many changes our project management model is held together by bubble gum and hairpins. It is very inefficient and ineffective as well. We are right in the middle of the project, and the solution is now known. All that is left is to build and deploy the solution.

I contend that there are situations in Complex Project Management where changing PMLC Models during project execution will be a good business decision. So for the above example, should we abandon Scrum in favor of a more traditional model? What factors should we consider in making that decision?

The Situation

The Complex Project Landscape is one where either the Solution or the Goal are not clearly defined or understood at the outset of the project. Through iteration, the deliverables converge on the final Goal and/or Solution. Then there is the acceptance of the deliverables, and that is measured by delivered business value compared to planned business value. Obviously, these are high-risk projects. It is what happens during the execution of these projects that is my interest here. First of all learning and discovery will have taken place and perhaps after some number of iterations the Goal is known (you chose an Extreme Model because the Goal was not clearly defined at the outset) or the Solution is known (you chose and Agile Model because the Solution was not clearly defined at the outset of the project). Your team is not experienced in the Model you chose originally and would be much more effective if they could switch to a more Traditional Model.

The Factors

Such a change may sound simple but let’s consider some of the factors that we will have to deal with if we decide to change PMLC Models.

Cost

There are three costs to consider:

Cost of abandonment – This will include documenting the current status of the project if a new team will be brought on board. Any contracts that may not be carried forward and will have to be closed will also be added to the cost. If any deliverables produced so far will not be part of the final solution, there are sunk costs to be added.

Cost of creating the new plan – These are labor costs and facility costs that would not be otherwise incurred. In some cases, these costs will be offset by iteration planning costs that would have been incurred using the initially chosen model.

Cost to execute the new plan – These costs will have to be compared to the cost of executing the original plan

Schedule

Most likely the time to re-plan the project will have to be added as will the time to execute the new plan as compared to the time to execute the original plan. If there are changes to the team composition, the availability of those new team members may adversely affect the new schedule.

Team Composition

The skill profile of the new team may be different from the skill level of the original team. Project team membership should be expected and the need for hand-off documentation identified.

Scope Change

There is still the possibility that scope change will affect the new plan going forward, but at least the deliverables and expected business value will have been defined.

Benefits

Following an agile or extreme methodology leaves open the final deliverables and the business value that will result. Following a traditional methodology removes those uncertainties and gives sponsors and executive management a criteria for portfolio decision making. That is more in their comfort zone.

Putting It All Together

This is not a definitive analysis because that is not possible without a specific project situation to consider. Rather, I hope I have defined the factors that must be considered when making a decision to change PMLC Models in mid-project. It is a complex decision with multiple criteria to consider. In my experience, the decisions have ranged from no-brainers to complex. There will be evidence supporting the change and evidence for no change. There will be intangibles too. For example, the team may have established momentum and what value do you place on that? The simple gut feel of the team may be the ultimate decision criteria.

Chicken Don’t Care – How Much QA is Enough QA for Your Project?

Written by Brad Egeland on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Chicken Don’t Care – How Much QA is Enough QA for Your Project?

Quality assurance – that necessary evil that we all must pay attention to on our project deliveries to some degree.

Don’t get me wrong, it should be part of every project, but incorporating it well into an ongoing project engagement is painful and often beyond the scope and control of the project manager and business analyst depending on a few factors, of course.

The definition of quality assurance is… “the maintenance of a desired level of quality in a service or product, especially by means of attention to every stage of the process of delivery or production.”

The “chicken do not care” phrase is something that my wife and I have been uttering almost non-stop as we have been building a chicken coop on our property out of pallets. It is turning out great, and we did a lot of online research and sketching before starting, but it is not like changes are going through a formal change review and control process. If it seems to work, feel structurally sound, and meet the needs of what we are trying to do, then we utter that statement (“chicken do not care”), implement it, and move on. We will loosely call this our scope change and quality assurance approval process.

Will that work for a regular project? Well, I think you know the definite answer is a loud, “NO!” What amount of quality assurance oversight does need to be involved in your project work, your change processes and scope management, and your customer delivery? The easy answer is – it depends. I wish it could be rigid and well defined… and the same from project to project… but there is no way that is ever going to be the case. I am thinking of quality assurance in terms of a business analyst oversight function if it has to land somewhere. The project manager must care and must be involved and help oversee it, and certainly the entire team must own it on their own tasks and deliverables and as a team. However, as far as one role truly owning it, to me, that is the business analyst who interacts with the tech team, the project manager, the customer and the customer’s end users. The business analyst role has to be where the quality buck stops and where the rubber meets the road in terms of quality project delivery.

Now, how much quality assurance that goes into any project is going to depend on a few – if not all – of these factors and more:

  • Public vs. private sector project niche
  • Dollar value of the projection
  • Visibility of the project
  • Project client demands
  • Length of projection
  • Industry of the project
  • Probably many, many others

Let’s at least consider each of these that I have specifically mentioned here to some degree…

Public Vs. Private Sector Project Niche

In some cases, public vs. private sector projects will differ on how much QA is needed or required. In the past, I had a top leadership role in a $50 million government project. We were required to put on formal quarterly reviews alternating in Iowa City and Washington, DC and present a formal quality audit review at each of those formal project reviews. We also had to do an annual disaster recovery demonstration. So, the focus on quality was high – probably both because it was a public sector project and because it had a $50 million price tag. This leads us to our next factor category.

Dollar Value of the Projection

Certainly, the dollar value of the project can create cause – or at least perceived cause – for more quality assurance and control oversight over the deliverables, tasks, and reports for the project. Logically, I would expect less effort and dollars to be spent on QA for a $10,000 project than a $1 million project. I do not believe any project should go QA-free. I know that some are going to get a lot more than others – and the project dollar value is going to usually be a big driving force.

Visibility of the Project

Your so-called high profile project. Is it a newsworthy project? Are industry leaders looking at your project as a benchmark project delivery? If so, then quality control and assurance better be pretty darn high. I’m not saying that should not always be the case… however, the amount of time and money you are going to be allowed by the customer and by your senior management on QA tasks and reporting is going to be swayed by the number of eyes that are on it. That is just a cold hard reality.

Project Client Demands

Your customer is definitely going to have a say in how much quality assurance goes into the effort. That may not be the case, but they will have a say as to how much money they spend on it as part of the project. If QA isn’t important to them, but it is very important to your delivery organization – as it should be – then you will likely still perform detailed QA oversight, but you’ll be doing much of it for free just to ensure you are delivering a quality end product and that your customer is happy no matter how much they are spending. You never know when that next project they return for will be that $1 million project.

Length of Project

The length of the project may factor in – though not as heavily as the project price tag likely will. A longer project that has more tasks, deliverables, and milestones also will have more chances to fall apart. Keen QA oversight can help to better keep it on track, on time, on budget and avoid many risks and re-work that would otherwise be associated with sloppy project delivery and less built-in quality assurance.

Industry of the Project

Finally, the industry of the project may lend itself to determining how much quality assurance is required. Projects being carried out in aviation, engineering, the automobile industry, health care and security – among many others – could logically demand a great deal of quality assurance and control oversight as compared to projects carried out in other genres. Agree?

Summary

We should always want to deliver quality. I know I want to but sometimes the time and money are not there to warrant the full QA effort… or sometimes others in charge at higher levels say “no”… or say “more QA!” The answer still is – it depends. Sticking to best practices in your project deliveries is still the best way to ensure daily quality project delivery no matter how much formal dedicated QA oversight there is on your project.

What are your thoughts? How much formal quality assurance oversight gets involved in your projects? What would you change or add to my list?

Why Are Projects STILL Failing?

Written by Mike Morton on . Posted in Articles. 4 Comments on Why Are Projects STILL Failing?

You have heard the old joke “Do software projects really fail?” Answer: “No. They get split into phases!”

Jokes apart, the general impression, which is backed by research numbers from some of the leading organizations like Gartner and Forrester, is that 70-80% of software projects fail. Repeatedly we on the delivery side are lampooned to the point that we start disbelieving ourselves. The number of project successes seem to be as alien as finding life on Mars. Is it true that software projects fail that often?

What is failure? When any of the following 4 occur, a project is considered a failure:

  • the required functionality is not met
  • there is a time overrun,
  • there is a cost overrun,
  • a combination of any of the above 3.

There are projects that are totally scrapped for political and other reasons but I am keeping them out of this post. It will be interesting to see if someone can get the breakdown of the 70-80% failure rate among the 4 factors listed above to provide a little more clarity on where most projects are failing.

Required Functionality Not Met

The onus for this squarely rests with the project team and more so on the Business Analyst. However, I would like to add some context to this statement. In a traditional waterfall model the requirements are gathered first, analyzed and make their way through the SDLC process. In large projects the time gap between gathering requirements and UAT is significant, couple of years in some cases. In a rapidly changing world this time gap is significant as the requirements could have changed for no fault of the BA or the project team. Or the business environment is such that things change quickly (the financial crisis in 2008 drastically altered the way that banks view liquidity) or new legislation was introduced (think Dodd-Frank or Basel) that calls for a significant change in the way business is conducted. All these are beyond the control of the project team, though sufficient hints will be available (and will be seen by a keen BA) of impending changes. If nothing has changed and the functionality is still not met, the problem may have stemmed from any of the many points along the SDLC lifecycle – the requirements were poorly written, inadequate analysis, inappropriate design assumptions, no technical walkthroughs, poor caliber of the technical team, no unit testing, no SIT or poor quality of SIT, or simply insufficient time to do any of these.

Time and/or Cost Overrun

The reason I combine the two is, in most cases, because they go hand-in-hand. (In some cases, as in where the project is on hold and people are moved to other projects temporarily, there may be a time overrun but not a cost overrun). For effective measurement, there must be a benchmark. When we say a project overran time or budget then the implicit assumption is that the time and budget estimates were accurate in the first place. How often does this happen?

Generally, the time is pre-determined either by the business or the project manager or someone higher up. “The project go-live date is 30th June”. That’s it! Work backwards and figure out how to fit the SDLC within that time frame. Having scratched around we figure the requirements and analysis are due in 5 days! The time estimates are inaccurate, grossly underestimated and fundamentally wrong. Come June 30th the project is checked for completion and is given an ‘F’ grade. How fair is that?

So is the case with the budget. Estimating time and cost is an imperfect science. There are many methods that have been around ranging from the least complex-pick-a-number-from-thin-air to very complex function point analysis with a bunch of others with varying degrees of complexity lying in between. But for a few, most of the projects I have been part of the budget is determined by someone who is detached from reality and has not heard of any of the estimating mechanisms. In some instances these numbers were pruned down by the budget department. Now, what does the budget department know about the system? Zilch. Are these high-end methods reliable enough to produce an accurate estimate? No. But we have some basis for the numbers.

Why don’t many folks use these methods? Lack of time is the common answer. There is another reason too – lack of information to input into these methods. It is very interesting to note the stage at which the cost is estimated. In almost all situations the cost is estimated even before the requirements process starts! The reason is simple – “we need to create a project charter for which we need an estimate. Give us a number”. Surprisingly these guesstimates become estimates and finally serve as the benchmark against which the final results are compared.

We have an inaccurate time and cost estimate to begin with. Is it fair to compare the actual time and cost of the project against these inaccurate numbers? No, but this is precisely the conundrum we are in.

The Endless Cycle of Project Failure

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Here is some food for thought to break the cycle:

  • Elicit requirements fully and analyze them. These costs cannot be capitalized anyway. These are sunk costs if projects don’t happen but at least they provide a greater insight.
  • Estimate time and cost based on those detailed requirements.
  • Use a reasonable estimation method to arrive at time and cost.
  • Compare actual project time and actual costs against these estimates.

Let’s bust up those project failure reasons to deliver project success!

Tips to manage personal life effectively while preparing for PMP

Written by Jyoti Gupta on . Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Tips to manage personal life effectively while preparing for PMP

Are you a PMP aspirant struggling to manage time? Do you find yourself compromising necessary deliverables to extract time for PMP?

PMP preparation requires a dedicated time slot, if you are a busy person trying to fit in PMP in your existing schedule, you may end up messing up your personal or professional life.

Today, time management is the most complicated task; it requires really effective planning to divide your time and energy between work and the other important aspects of your life. Try one week following your plan religiously, with a week unplanned; you would found great difference regarding productive activities done or not done. Effective planning reduces the stress, and you can find sufficient time to prepare for your PMP Exam.

Plan and Re-Plan

Studying for the PMP certification requires a plan. The best way to prepare a plan for your studying is to know your strengths and weaknesses. Run through your study materials once or twice. Acquire a testing simulation application or find a simulation website in which to test your knowledge in a realistic way. Take the test and determine which questions you got wrong. For the questions you got wrong, determine the topic or knowledge area for the questions. Write those topics and knowledge areas on a list. These are your focus topics.

Rinse and repeat. Focus studying on the knowledge areas and topics where you were the weakest when taking the exam. When you think you have them fully understood, take the simulated exam again. Did you get questions related to those knowledge areas right? Then cross it off the list. Still didn’t answer those questions related to a knowledge area or topic correctly? Keep them on the list and determine why you are not able to answer the questions correctly.

Plan and re-plan your study topics and knowledge areas to focus on those areas where you don’t have a solid comprehension. Reading over topics and knowledge areas where you have a strong understanding is not a good use of your time. If you know it cold, you don’t need to keep reviewing it.

Most test simulation tools have a way only to take questions from a specific knowledge area. This can help you focus your studying. You can focus on each knowledge area one at a time and study until you are very comfortable with the test simulation questions and are getting them right.

Don’t shoot for 100% accuracy on test simulations. Get your score to around 80-90% correct for a knowledge area. Then move on to the next one.

Once you are getting 80 – 90 % accuracy on individual knowledge areas then run the ENTIRE test or take the test for ALL knowledge areas. At this point, keep track of the questions you answered incorrectly. Focus your studying and understanding why those questions were answered wrong. Keep a study list of topics.

Keep taking the entire full set of knowledge areas until you feel comfortable. You’re not going to get 100% of the questions right every time, but you should try to get to 90% correct as a goal.

Managing Daily Routine

Observe yourself for a week to determine the time you are spending for both personal and professional commitments.

  • Start by making the list of household activities
  • Prioritize the tasks in order of their importance
  • Identify tasks which are important and can be out-sourced, for example; you can send the clothes for ironing, pay your maid extra for additional work only for short duration till your exam
  • Remove three least important tasks, with a long-term backup plan

Find a Dedicated Study Space

It is equally important to identify a comfortable study area for yourself. You need a dedicated study space, with everything readily available. Try keeping your phone and internet out of reach during your PMP study.

Find the “happy place” where you can focus and concentrate on studying and learning. The kitchen table is a popular place to get things done, but you will most certainly be distracted by all your family members. If you don’t have a study space, then it is time to create one at home or at another location. Would the local library work? Are there study rooms at the local library that you could use? Can an area inside your home be set aside or blocked off for you to study? Could you use a conference room at work over lunch or after work?

You really need to work on your “happy place” area and try to figure out the distracting factors during your preparation. Eliminate the distractions as best you can.

Set Aside Dedicated Time

You may have to miss out some important family functions, some weekend parties, and few coffees with friends, but this is a small price for a larger goal. Keep people informed in advance about your commitment to minimize the diversions.

Schedule study time. Block time on your calendar for a set period every day. If you are unable to block a specific period every day, then schedule regular study sessions when your schedule allows. Scheduling the time ensures you will have the time set aside for studying. Communicate to your family and others that this time is needed for studying. Let them know you might not respond to them during these times so you can focus on studying.

Measure Your Daily Outcomes and Small Wins

Keep track of your simulated test results. Are you getting better or worse? What knowledge areas trip you up? Keep a focus list or study list that outlines the topics you are not answering correctly. Focus your study on that list.

If your results on the simulated exam go down repeatedly, then think about taking a break from studying to re-group your thoughts. Getting time to unwind and remove stress is important to helping you study effectively.

Celebrate your small successes. Sounds silly but it’s a good way to motivate yourself. Celebrating a small success can be anything from giving yourself a small chocolate bar. Celebrate by just having a movie night with your family and telling them the good news. Pick a celebration the works for you and go for it.

Find Your Ideal Pace

Most PMP aspirants start the preparation with the mindset that they can still cover the entire content in 2 weeks time, as they could do it in their student life. It is important to understand that both energy and caliber is much less now. So first analyze your actual ability in few days of your preparation. Then make a realistic study plan for yourself.

The key to success is creating a goal based approach for you and follow it very religiously come what may. In the case of unforeseen deviation in your plan, try to get back on track as soon as possible to maintain your plan.

Make sure that you keep some relaxing time for yourself every day, and try to enjoy your preparation by relating the topics with real world examples. A high-quality environment at home will boost your morale and speed up your preparation.

Rescuing a Troubled or Failing Project

Written by Barry Currry on . Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on Rescuing a Troubled or Failing Project

Project Managers from time to time are called in to help rescue projects that are failing. Here are a few areas a Project Manager…

could focus on when determining the corrective action needed to bring a project back on track.

Background to the Problem

The first action is to understand why you have been called in to support or help rescue the project– what is the nature of the problem or problems? – Have the issues been defined? What was the trigger that caused the client to take action? How did the client recognize that there was a problem?

What is the project problem statement?

Understanding the background and current situation of the project allows the project manager to formulate a more effective corrective action plan to bring the project back on track. Some questions to ask are:

  • Has the issue been clearly understood?
  • What has lead the client to recognize that there are problems with the project?
  • How is it known that there are problems?
  • What evidence is available? Assume nothing here.

When did the issue first occur?

Understanding the timeline of when issues and problems occurred within the project can also assist in putting together a root cause of the issues and problems the project is facing.

When was the problem first recognized?

When did the project stake holders officially recognize that the project is failing and needed help? When posing this question, it is important to understand the difference between the symptom and the underlying cause. A symptom is the effect of the problem, and although related to the problem, the focus should remain on the reasons behind or the cause of the symptom.

The first symptom may have manifested itself sometime after the root cause event that triggered the symptom. Therefore – How did the problem first manifest itself? What evidence is available to substantiate the claims?

Looking at the key performance indicators of most projects – these include:

  • Schedule
  • Cost
  • Scope

Is the project late on a number of key milestones?

Is the project greatly over budget?

Has the scope of the project changed?

What controls are in place to monitor these KPIs? When were they first flagged and by whom and why?

Understand Key Process Indicators or Project Health Indicators that are used on the project. It is helpful to understand how these indicators are calculated, how frequently they are reported, and the history of indicator results over a period of time.

Previous Action Taken

Previous attempts at taking corrective action should also be fully understood. Ideally, you don’t want to try to take a corrective action that had previously failed. You can also learn as to why corrective actions failed so that that corrective actions that you put in place don’t fail. Some questions to consider:

  • What action has been taken so far?
  • What has been done by whom and when in the initial stage of the investigation into the failing project? This needs to be understood because early action without research or careful thought I have made the issue worse.
  • Has someone recorded what he or she have done and recorded the impact of what he or she have done?

Problem Impact

An another critical component of understanding the project’s current situation is to understand the extent of the project and how the project’s failure to meet expectations is impacting the business. Project failure has a cost to the business and understanding that cost can assist in creating a meaningful response to bring the project back on track. Some questions to consider:

  • What is the impact of the project problems to the business?
  • Where should the project be now in terms of progress?

Additionally, understanding the extent to which the project is off course. In order to make corrective actions, understanding of the projects current deviation from plan is important to understand. Some questions to consider:

  • Where is the project now in terms of percentage complete?
  • Is there are metric available on Earned Value against Planned Value? Are these figures reliable?

Review the Original Objectives and Scope

Before taking corrective actions on a troubled project, a project manager should understand the project’s scope and deliverables. The project charter outlines the scope and deliverables for the project as a starting point, but changes most often have occurred in the scope. Project scope and deliverables might no longer be valid because of changes in the business. Some questions to consider:

  • Are the original Objectives and Scope of the project still valid?
  • Have the objectives and goals of the project changed?
  • Has the scope changed enough to significantly derail the project?

Review the Project Performance to Date in Detail –

List all of the key deliverables, milestones and assess:

  • Where should they be in terms of completion / delivery?
  • Where are they (status)actually in terms of completion / delivery?

Assessment of the original plan against current status in detail is critical, and there is no shortcut to completing this assessment. The assessment will \will take time, and the devil is in the details. There can be a huge number of deliverables in a large project, so this process is not for the faint-hearted.

It is recommended to be as binary (yes or no and complete or not complete answers) as possible during this review so that the results are honest. It is important to note that you will not make any friends during this process so try to take the emotion out of discussions by focussing on the facts. Some clients may hire in external resources with no personal history on the site in order to get to the facts and remove the possibility of any personal influence.

If a task is late or has had to be repeated has this resulted in an increased cost? Is this substantial? How is this being measured on an hourly/daily basis?

The resulting report from this review process will arm you with the factual data from which you can get to the root cause of the problem(s) and re-plan the project to get back on track for a successful outcome.

Project Risks

Review the original project risks to assess if they are still valid. Have the project risks been updated? Are there any new risks that need to be assessed? How will they affect the project? Have any of the original or new risks been realized? Have they had any impact on the project delivery?

Analyze the Data

Are there any patterns emerging from the review data. Using these results – look for patterns such as consistent issues with departments, people, vendors – that are consistently late or repeating tasks not completed correctly.

If there is an obvious pattern with a delivery and this is identified back to a person or a department, look for further evidence. Is the person experienced enough? Are they the right person for the job? Is there role in the project clear to them and everyone else? Are they doing other work that is preventing them from focusing on project work? Are they capable of the work assigned to them? How was this person or department originally assessed for capability? How was individual performance being monitored?

Are there other factors influencing delivery -e.g. personal behaviors, interdependent service inefficiencies, process issues, system issues, late equipment/software material delivery, procurement issues?

Are operations based resources being allocated enough time to work on the project? Has the client prioritized the project to reflect the required delivery times?

The purpose of this analysis should not be a witch hunt but an honest review of the data recorded in order to get to the real issues.

Do not overlook here to review the controls processes if they fail to capture an issue early enough to control the issue.

Report

Produce a report of your work that should include but not be limited to:

  • Background to the Problem
  • Findings
  • Results
  • Conclusion
  • Recommendations

Utilizing the data that you have collected and the conclusions that you have drawn, based on evidence -communicate the results and recommendations to your main point of contact at the client site on a 1:1 basis.

Present the raw facts to them on confidence and seek their advice on:

  • What would they prefer to do next?
  • How should this information be released to the wider audience?

This will be a good measure of the politics on site and how it should be managed. Remember this is the client’s choice on how they wish to manage the situation.

Although it is rare -it is not unknown for clients not to do anything following such an investigation as corporately the “right thing to do” would step on too many toes and may not be the politically correct course of action.

Take Corrective Action

In order to get the project back on track you will need to do the following based on what you have learned:

  • Define the Scope
  • Perform a Project Risk Assessment
  • Re-plan the activities with new milestones
  • Re-work the budget to reflect the new plan
  • Select the project team (typically some original -some new members)
  • Create a proposal outlining the Project be delivered and what will be different his time in order to prevent a recurrence of issues.
  • Make this presentation to the key stakeholders and seek support and approval to move forward.
  • Kick off the project and implement the necessary controls.