What's Your Requirements Architecture Mean to You?
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Situation: You want to understand how organizational influences impact your work. |
Posted on: August 01, 2009 10:51 PM
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Free, High-Quality Training?
| Situation: You want to turn your jobless stretch into a huge gain. I'm always skeptical about training 'scholarships'. So when the folks at ESI brought their program to my attention, I was thinking "here we go again...". After closer examination however, I think this program is pretty cool - and very generous. Here are the basics of the program:
“Despite the current economy, project management as a profession is expected to grow substantially in the next few years with an increasing demand worldwide in such project-intensive industries as manufacturing, pharmaceutical, construction and IT,” said John Elsey, President & CEO, ESI. “This program will allow professionals to keep up their skills in the industry to take advantage of these leading economic opportunities.” There are a few questions we thought you would want answers to right away. John was kind enough to answer them below... Q. Are the candidates selected based on any criteria other than being unemployed? Or is it first come first served for people who are jobless? (if there are additional criteria, what’s the best way to get selected?) John: We wanted to help as many people as possible with ESI’s $500,000 Stand Out Scholarship; keeping the qualification and application process easy was vital in achieving that objective. So as long as someone is unemployed, can show proof of unemployment, and is a US citizen or permanent resident, they are qualified for the scholarship. Awards are issued on a first come, first served basis when the completed application and backup documentation (found at www.esi-intl.com/scholarship <http://www.esi-intl.com/scholarship> ) is emailed to [email protected] or faxed to (703) 558-2261. The only other consideration is that there is space available in the class they’ve selected; if a class is full we’ll work with them to try to find an alternative. Q. What are the most popular classes in the project management curriculum? In the business analysis curriculum? John: We offer more than 30 courses in our Project Management and Business Analysis. curricula, from entry level to advanced training. These are all eligible under the ESI SOS program. While our program’s core courses are generally the most popular, the relevancy of the course based on the individual’s experience and skill gap is the most important factor to consider when selecting an appropriate course or program. Many of our courses are offered in the public classroom, e-Training and instructor-led Virtual Classroom formats. Q. How many more courses beyond the three would someone have to take to get an Associates or Masters through the program? John: With just three courses total someone can earn an Associate’s Certificate in Project Management from ESI and our academic partner The George Washington University. Since people can apply for and take up to three courses with SOS funds, they have the opportunity to quickly and inexpensively earn an impressive certificate which they can add to their resume. Students can earn a Professional Certificate in Business Analysis with a total of just five classes. Or a Master’s Certificate in Project Management with a total of seven courses. Plus, GW will award advanced standing toward its Master of Science in Project Management to those who earn a GW/ESI project management Master’s Certificate and meet other requirements. Our Course Counselors are available to help students determine the best courses to achieve their learning and career objectives. |
Posted on: July 13, 2009 10:34 AM
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How Agile Development Methods and ITPM Help With Cost Control
Situation: You are considering an Agile/Traditional mix of approaches..jpg) When you think of portfolio management, traditional approaches to project management seem to be a natural fit. However, Agile approaches, with their tight focus on business needs, are steadily increasing in popularity. In many cases, Agile is used within the core development team, but as part of a larger, phased delivery project. These “blended approach” organizations still have a need to practice sound project and program management disciplines, but allow the Agile teams to work in the manner associated with that approach. An ITPM solution is required to manage the total project portfolio, but must be flexible enough to address these different methodologies. In the end, IT must manage the end to end Agile development effort, from backlog to sprint delivery, all within the context of the broader Project Portfolio view. All of this seems difficult enough to manage on its own. So how can these varied solutions go one step further and help you control costs?We recently spoke with Rick Moreau, Director of Field Enablement, Compuware Changepoint Solutions, who has a great deal of practical experience in this area. Here’s what he had to say about how it all fits together. Q. Mechanically, dealing with efforts that are a mix of traditional and Agile approaches seems tricky. Can you give us a few “rules of the road” for making it work efficiently and effectively? Your introduction hits the nail on the head: Organizations need to be able to leverage an Agile development approach, but still need to make higher level decisions utilizing a portfolio management discipline. So the decisions about which projects to take on, which investments to make, etc. are still handled by the demand management and assessment functionality of the portfolio management process. Once the decision has been made to take on a particular project, some or all of that project may be managed using Agile. The key is that some boundaries have been set for the project as a whole, such as start and finish dates, total budget and perhaps even the minimum included scope. The Agile teams then take over to do the detailed planning of the sprints or iterations. Q. The Agile mindset is often described as beginning with the concept that “your initial plan is wrong”. Done incorrectly, that can make end results questionable or less predictable – which doesn’t help when you are prioritizing projects, managing resources, and cost. How do you manage that from a PPM perspective? I’m not sure I agree with the Agile mindset taking the position that “your initial plan is wrong.” The Agile mindset is more about deciding what can get done and in what order, rather than laying it all out in a detailed plan in advance. Agile teams will make a “best guess” at what they can complete and will then refine the requirements and associated estimates as development proceeds. I think that the PPM perspective and the Agile mindset can co-exist in an organization. As a matter of fact, they will have to co-exist or that organization will have tremendous difficulty delivering value to the organization. If we look at the basics of Agile we see a reasonable initial estimate of the size and make-up of the sprint teams, duration and number of sprints in the overall project plan. This gives us what we need for resource demand and capacity analysis. The identification of critical or high priority backlog items gives us what we need for “minimum scope.” So the PPM perspective has what it needs at the high-level for planning the resource utilization, schedule and cost. The Agile mindset can then take over the detailed planning at the sprint level, working within the boundaries of the dates, sprint team size and priority backlog items. They organize and prioritize using the Agile processes and add additional items if capacity is available. I see that as not much different than traditional project planning on a large project. Many projects cannot and do not have detailed project plans from the very start. They have high-level tasks identified for various work packages, with a best guess of resource needs and dates. As the project proceeds, these high-level tasks get defined to a more detailed level, usually 90 days out. Conceptually, that is the same thing we are talking about to support Agile within the larger discipline of PPM, except we may now only be talking 30 days out. Q. Do you feel that, generally speaking “more Agile” = “more business alignment”? What are the implications here from a cost perspective? The theory behind Agile definitely means more business alignment, no doubt about it. The product owner--i.e. the business representatives--identify the requirements and prioritize them. They have the right to change them anytime they want, expanding the requirements, changing priority of items, etc. The role of the Agile teams is to do the things the product owner says are most important. As long as the product owner is representing the business, and not just a resource within development, you can’t help but be more aligned with the business. But realize that the alignment with the business starts earlier than the Agile portions. The decisions to do a project or build a product or have another release should be made with business alignment at the forefront. Business alignment starts with the portfolio planning decisions. The Agile portion simply helps the development groups maximize that alignment and value by working very closely with the product owner. From a cost perspective, I think organizations have more visibility and control than they may originally think. People tend to think that Agile gives away all ability to have a budget and track costs. That’s simply not true. Backlog items have an estimated effort associated with them, sprints have a planned duration and team size. This provides us what we need to build a project budget and have an initial scope of what we will get for that investment. We can, in essence, build a budget for the sprint and track accordingly. What we give up is the ability to have a detailed cost estimate for every backlog item or requirement until we get started on that item. We will have the initial estimate based on the backlog estimate, but not the definitive estimate until the team starts working on it. I don’t see this as a huge sacrifice when you consider how many tasks or requirements on a traditional waterfall approach end up going through a change request process, or at least should. Q. I understand how Project Management can help reduce costs or enhance ROI, but how can a managed Agile/Traditional blend help you do that more effectively? I’m not sure a combined approach helps reduce costs, but I think it helps you increase value. What I mean by that is you may spend the same amount on the project, using the same number of people for the same length of time. But you will get the highest priority items delivered as part of the project and delivered in a way that meets the requirements of the business, since they will be able to refine those requirements through the Agile process. If all goes well, the Agile process will allow you to include even more things in the project than originally included, thereby increasing the value even more. In the worse case, the high priority items may turn out to be so complex that the project cannot meet the initial items within the desired timeframe. That may lead to a decision to stop the project altogether. That should become evident early in the Agile cycles, so the cost of proceeding with the initial sprint and then determining if that is acceptable is likely no different than the traditional spending on an initial “definition” phase. The key is to have the discipline to stop the project if it will not be delivering the required payback, whether that is determined in a traditional definition phase or in the first few sprints of an Agile process. Q. I’ve had conversations with analysts that describe your Agile integration approach as industry leading. Your leadership position in this month’s Gartner Magic Quadrant and the report narrative seem to support that as well. What specific or unique tool features enable effective Agile integration? (and Why?) What have you learned from implementations so far and what future changes are coming as a result? There are four areas of Changepoint functionality that have existed for several years and allowed us to incorporate support for Agile without having to build customizations to the core code. The first is request management, which is the ability to capture an “item” of any type, route it for initial review and place it into various statuses. This provides the functionality needed to capture and track product backlog requirements. It gives us the flexibility needed to support any different type of requirement and any preliminary review process a customer may desire leading up to placing the item in the backlog. The second area is our configurable workflow and the ability to define a logic step, which is the ability to have the workflow perform a complex action. We have leveraged this to take the items selected for the sprint and automatically create the sprint tasks and assignments on the project plan, so the team members do not have to. The third area is the ability to have distributed project managers within a Changepoint project. This allows you to have a defined user at a summary task level that can add and remove tasks just to that portion of the project plan. We refer to this as Summary Task Managers, but it was also perfect functionality to support the concept of the Scrum Master, who can add and remove tasks within a scrum or sprint. The final area is the Changepoint Report Designer. It provided the functionality we needed to build the various reports necessary for the Agile teams, such as the backlog reports, burn-up and burn-down and the sprint task board. Compuware Changepoint recently introduced an Agile Accelerator which is a pre-configured version of the Changepoint solution. The accelerator leverages the functionality mentioned to deliver best practices to support agile development processes and the associated reporting requirements, giving customers a starting point to manage agile development within a broader portfolio of projects. It is still early for much implementation experience, but one thing we are seeing is that all companies do things slightly different, even with Agile. We have seen this over the years with respect to standard project management processes and it also holds true with Agile. Fortunately for us and our customers, the flexibility of Changepoint allows them to easily make changes to the configuration, workflow and reports to meet their specific process. |
Posted on: July 04, 2009 06:54 PM
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Iran, Twitter, and Project Management
Situation: You are still trying to figure out what Twitter is good for. Much has been made of how Twitter has been used to circumvent Government censorship in Iran - letting us know what's really going on in places where journalists have no access. A lot of that is because:1. Twitter can be completely anonymous and untraceable.
2. Twitter is so immediate and easy to use. So, even under extreme pressure, anyone can feel comfortable commenting and reporting issues on Twitter. Think about that for a second. How many times have you found out about project issues too late because of office politics or fear of reprisals? Wouldn't it have been great to have a suggestion box that people could trust because it resides outside of the organization? What would happen if you set up a Twitter account and asked people to "direct (private) message" you with suggestions, comments, difficult issues, and just "things you should know about". Perhaps you could push people to do it at every status meeting. The comments would be completely anonymous and you could even have a longer private conversation through direct messages if required. You would have to make sure they didn't openly "Tweet" any private company info, but that shouldn't be a problem. If Iranian dissidents feel comfortable risking jail by Tweeting, why wouldn't your team feel comfortable using it to make things more successful?
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Posted on: June 22, 2009 02:56 PM
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Where is Project Management Certification Taking the Profession?
| Situation: You want to know what the new PMP and PRINCE2 certs are doing for us. I've seen many, many postings about how the PMP test has changed, but not much on how the certification is changing what it means to be a project management professional (lower case). We recently spoke with Joseph R. Czarnecki, PMP, Senior Advisor, ESI International, on this topic. He's a very seasoned trainer with a lot of expertise in this area and I think its a topic that we all care about. So, I'd love to hear your take on the answers he offers below.  Q. We all know the PMBOK and PMP certification have changed, but how do you see those changes affecting the type of Project Manager that people will now see as certified? What do you think PMI intended with each element of the changes? Do you think the results align with those intentions? A: Let’s look at where it appears that PMI is headed with their PMP credential – where it has changed recently, then we will look at the PMBOK® Guide changes. Finally, we will discuss how these are viewed in the organizations that I have taken pleasure in working with. First, I believe that PMI is working toward a family of credentials that will bear proof that the individual owner of the credential is, in fact, qualified in knowledge, skill, and ability. I look to the recent growth of PMI and the PMP to help give a glimpse of where the profession is headed. As of June 2009, PMI reported having more than 300,000 members and more than 336,000 PMPs and close to 8,000 CAPMs. To be sure, their relatively new certifications in risk management, scheduling, and program management are also growing. That is a year-over-year growth of about 20%, since 1975. So from past performance, PMI is making an impression on just how people see certified project managers. Over the last few years, PMI has changed the PMP Credential to make it more of a consistently measurable and applied standard in two ways. First, PMI continues to work with an outside organization that designs standardized examinations to improve the quality of the questions on the examinations; specifically, they have included many more scenario-based questions which test the application of knowledge, rather than knowledge itself. This helps ensure the exam questions are a direct indicator of what PMI is trying to measure by that question. Secondly, PMI has increased the number of audits for those applying to the credential; current estimates are that PMI audits 15% of the candidates. These changes will help modify the perception of the PMP credential from that of just an exam-based credential to one that includes demonstrable skill in the discipline as well. And it shows that the nature of the credential is changing to more of a skill, or application, based credential and away from a purely knowledge-based examination. So, I do think that the changes, along with the interim steps that they are taking, are in line with where they want the credentials to grow. The recent changes in the PMBOK® Guide actually make the book much more user friendly. It is a good guide to the body of knowledge about project management and, this time, a better read overall. But to the question regarding the changes in the PMBOK® Guide and the PMP Certification itself and how they will impact how the certified project manager is seen in the bigger picture. I feel that the changes that they have made as far back as 2004 and then here with the 2008 update have been done with forethought to firmly establish project management as a formal profession, as opposed to a job. The PMP credential has become more of a standard by which project managers are going to be measured, and will become a baseline requirement for various organizations in the future – from organizations that require at least one PMP on the project when they release a major procurement to organizations that use the PMP as one element of their own internal certification process. For an example of another type of credential that is further along a similar evolution path than the PMP, look at how the MBA started out as a college degree that became the ‘gold-standard’ of business. In the early days of the MBA, it was considered “special” for you to have the MBA degree conferred upon you, but today it has changed to being more of a requirement than something truly special. This is what will become of the PMP Credential – not that it will lose its glamour and prestige, but that it will become the baseline upon which all project managers will be expected to perform, before they take on a project. The PMP is still a sound way for helping to identify those that have the knowledge and skill sufficient to lead a successful project. It is a way of ensuring that the individual knows about the tools, techniques, and processes to manage projects successfully. Q. Next month a new version of PRINCE2 is being released in the UK that significantly shortens the standard (http://www.docstoc.com/docs/7115588/Next-Generation-Prince2-2009--Will-Become-Available-in-July). Some say PMI should consider doing the same. How do you feel about that? A. First, I want to say that there is a very fundamental difference between PMBOK® Guide and PRINCE2®. PRINCE2® is a process-based approach for project management; it has a series of processes which cover all of the activities on a project from start up to close out. It tells you what to do when on a project. PRINCE2® is a method for managing projects. It helps you identify who should be involved and what they will be responsible for. It provides a set of processes to execute and explains what information a project manager should be gathering along the way. PMI’s PMBOK® Guide is a work-based approach for project management and is not a method; and it says so in the publication itself. It is a “guide” to the larger universe of project management knowledge that currently exists. It is a compendium of what is known about project management. Like PRINCE2®, it is a collection of processes. But unlike PRINCE2®, the PMBOK® Guide suggests to the user that the processes are iterative in nature and therefore are not listed in a definitive series. It is not a prescriptive approach to managing a project. PMI gives you recommendations and “best practices” but doesn’t tell you exactly “what to do and when”. So, the PMBOK® Guide could be seen as providing the theory and best practices to project management where PRINCE2® could be seen as one set of tools to deliver project management. In my experience, with a little effort, the two work well together – PMBOK® Guide with the guidance, and PRINCE2® with the how – the tools and timing. Now to the question, should PMI shorten the PMBOK® Guide? No, I don’t think so, actually I think it will continue to grow over the years as more and more is expected of the project manager. For example, our client base is very interested in improving the business, or soft, skills of project managers. There’s actually very little in the PMBOK® Guide as regards this set of skills. Perhaps in the future there will be more in-depth treatment in this area. Q. Overall, what do you feel the changes in both standards say about how the profession is changing? A: I remember in the late 1990s the wide-ranging discussion about whether being a project manager was a job or a profession. Now, more than10 years later, it is clear to me that PMI has been successful in moving that argument forward and has done a significant amount in making project management so much more than a job – they have helped to establish project management as a profession; but they have done it in concert with the many corporations and organizations that we at ESI have worked with for the past 28 years. As the data clearly show, the profession is growing at an impressive rate. The changes to the credential show that PMI continues to support and advance a measurable, repeatable, and valid baseline against which project managers will be measured. Q. What changes to the profession and standards do you see coming in the future? A: As regards to the profession, it is apparent that the influence of certification and standards is having a profound effect on the development of project managers around the world. This trend will continue. In fact, PMI reports that 1.2 million project management job openings occur annually; yet, the supply of project managers is not keeping pace. With 30% of PMI membership due to retire in the next decade, organizations need to be constantly training and developing their staff. That development will only promote the benefits of certification and standard development. PMI, as well as other professional project management associations, such as IPMA and APM, will continue to refine current standards, as well as introduce new ones, as the need requires. For example, I predict that other standards in the areas of program and portfolio management will become necessary for project managers to understand and use. In other words, there will be a more complete integration of project, program, and portfolio management. In the short term, I believe the changes to the PMBOK® Guide and other standards will be driven more by the research PMI is doing in the practice standards that they are working on rather than some large change in the profession itself. I also think that there will be more continued discussions on how the various Project Management Organizations around the world can and do support each other. I don’t think they will go away as each has its own merit – but I think there will be discussion at a high-level about how they relate and support each other.  Joseph R. Czarnecki, PMP, Senior Advisor, ESI International, works with ESI's European and global clients to leverage ESI's expertise and resources to maximize client investments in improving the performance of project management and business analyst professionals and operations. Joe has been with ESI for over a decade and during that time has played a key role in the development and refinement of a majority of ESI’s courses as well as developed several highly tailored project management course suites for ESI’s global clients. www.esi-intl.com |
Posted on: June 22, 2009 01:09 PM
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