Hi. I am a Project Office Manager working for an important IT Programme in Scotland. While implementing my PO, I have found a lot of resistace from the PMs, not only related to the new processes being implemented but also to the mentoring and training that we want to provided to them to improve their PM knowledge, specially for the juniors. The attitude is "we are here because we know what to do". 1.Do you think this is a cultural issue? These training plans have work in other countries. 2.Do you think it has to do with the fact that I am a foreing woman? 3. Do you think it as to do with the fact that there are to many changes going on at the same time? 4. Any good advise on how to haddle the situation? Continue? Back off for a while? Saving Changes...
The method that International assignment uses to determine status and % complete is excellent as long as it uses the earned value approach to overall % complete.
In other words if each deliverable has an associated hours estimate assigned to it during the planning and estimation process that was completed at the outset of the project, then when a deliverable is complete credit is given for that number of hours -- no matter how many hours it actually took to get the deliverable completed. The budget for the project will be equal to the total of all of the hours estimated for each of the deliverables.
The beauty of this approach -- the earned hours approach -- is that the % complete is completely objective. The difficulty is that you need to have a very solid estimation process in your organization in order for this to work.
(If you want to apply this technique "full strength" you need to weight the hours spent with the cost associated with the hours -- in other words multiply the hours times the cost. This may not be necessary in every situation but is a the best way to control the financial budget for your project.)
The big problem with any sort of "earned value" scheme is that over the long haul, estimates will inflate to protect the ability to keep the earned value measure in the target range, lengthening the lead times of projects. In addition, if taking the full "earned value" of the estimate is seen as "on track," the project will also lose opportunities for faster than estimated completion. "On track" is good if you're running a railroad, when individual tasks need to be completed at particular points in time, but I'd rather use a process that supports "relay race" behaviors to maximize speed of completion and productivity of the project resources. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Frank, I see no problem related to using earned value other than the need to increase the discipline used in the process. If the culture that the estimates is developed in is permissive with estimates expanding at will then I agree with your warning.
My business is systems integration where there are market pressures that prevent this from happening. In my field we find earned value to be very helpful.
Regards, Frank Winters Saving Changes...
E Travis PMPGlobal Program Manager| PonderworksMelrose, Ma, United States
This is a very interesting thread. First, I'd like to offer, having built a PO myself, that I don't see the nature of a PO as something that can be temporary. There are so many benefits to having a PO and many of these benefits are only derived from a long term commitment to it. Quite often, attempting to implement a PO in an organization that is not ready can result in enough bad feeling that it will be a long time before anyone will attempt it again. Meanwhile, dramatic potential benefits (not to mention precious time) is lost.
On the matter of estimation, I have been a student of earned value for some time. Like most things in project management, it is only as good as the practioner. I developed what I thought is a better approach (though it takes a bit longer) utilizing a combination of team supplied estimates, historical metrics, and a system that measures the estimates against the passing of time. One can "play" with estimates and historical measures, but it is almost impossible to fool with the passing of hours and days. Saving Changes...
Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Had to put my 2 cents in here. We in the IT biz constantly strive to come up with ways to measure that which only we seem to care about. I suggest adopting the construction industry's model for measuring progress. Find ways to "walk the site". In my past life as a CIO and top exec in a billion dollar company and with over 20 years of working with execs I have found that they find most of IT's metrics meaningless. What they want is simplicity and concrete evidence that projects will be delivered on time, on budget and achieve the goals expected. Any reporting and tracking that does not deliver this is usually very unappreciated, not trusted and often resented. WOW that felt good. :)))) Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I agree with Michael Wood for the most part. The key thing to remember is that you want to deliver something of value. But once you've walked the site and used other rules of thumb to determine that a valuable product has been or is being created you might want to move to the next level. By that I mean getting the budget and schedule including expectations and scope creep under control. Earned value is an excellent tool for this purpose. It will not do everything and is not a magic bullet and it does require a high degree of organizational maturity, and will not work without it. Saving Changes...
Hi All: sorry for being away for a while. It was nice though to come back and see a few more posting on this subject. I attended the PMI Europe Conference the 4th of June. My evaluation of it is good even though some of the speakers were a little disappointing to me. I also attended their “Deployment of a Project Office” Seminar. It was quite basic but good anyway. I was expecting to know more about Project Office metrics but they discussed nothing about it. I will try and answer to all your comments (Pardon my English, it is not my native language)
To E Travis, about his concern of a PO being temporary:
One of the things I learned at the seminar is that: · A PO is an office staffed by project management professionals who serve their organization’s project management needs. · A full-service provider of project management services. · The centre of project management excellence.
The Five characteristics of a PO Culture are:
· Standardized project management methodology · Career path for projects managers · Education, training, and certification for projects managers, their managers, and executives · On going support through a Project Office · Standards suite of software tools
Depending on the level of maturity (applying SEI-CMM model), the objective of the PO, and the level where you place it in the organization, you can have different PO types. Level 1 (Project Controls): It is placed at project level and it will exist until the project or programme ends. The objective is Project Controls mostly and you use scheduling tools like Ms Project. In this type of PO you can mentor the PMs and use PM techniques and methodologies maybe, but you don’t take care of training, or career paths, or use any PM fancy tools. (This one looks like my PO). Level 2 (Organizational Project Control): It is placed at the organizational level, maybe the Business Units. It includes level 1 characteristic plus training, some sort of certification level, career paths and the use of Resource Management tools to allocate resources throughout the different projects. This last characteristic is what really makes the difference between level 1 and level 2 conceptually speaking. Level 3 (Enterprise Project Management): It is placed at the corporate level. It includes all of the above, certification for PMs and executives and the use of financial systems, heavy involvement of the Procurement and HR departments, skills inventory, etc. From the above, I think my PO can be a Level 1 temporary PO that will serve this programmes’ project management need until closeout time, and project planning and controls, communication and visibility at all times are the main objectives, nothing else for the moments. Saving Changes...
To Jim Harris about his question if I have considered using the traffic for risks, change requests, etc: Yes, I have. The tool not only controls project deliverables with respect to time and cost, but also has a risk register to track progress on management of risks, the same as for assumptions, dependencies and constraints. You can also generate change requirement forms for scope changes, and print them out for the client to sign. It also generate the Boston Square so you are aware of the size and manageability of your risks, and it will change the cells where they are place in the square as you track risks and update the information on the data base. When you generate the Highlight Report for the client, it will include all open risks, mitigation strategies, actions taken, summary information about costs and progress (the lights and percentages), the S curves and all the PMs comments. My client is really happy with what the tool and reports are providing for him. What he likes the most is that when he goes away on a trip, he can still see all progress and cost information, and all HR through the web, so he always has visibility of what is happening. Saving Changes...
To Frank Patrick about his question on how the 90% or 75% of expectation is derived: I am not using Earned Value. The main approach and requirement from the client has been to keep things simple since this is a PO Level 1 and most of the Project Managers are juniors, not CMM mature enough. But even though I don’t use Earned Value, what I do is to assign a specific weight to each main deliverable (milestone in the MS Project schedule) related to the amount of effort (days, hours) required to complete work for it. The weight is a percentage of the total amount of effort for the projects. Then, by adding up all of them you get your cumulative weights, which in turn draw your baseline S Curve. For example, if you expect to complete D1 (20% weight) and D2 (5% weight) by the end of July, your expected progress for the project should be 25%. If you completed only D2 and not D1, your % complete would be 5% which will be less than 75% of what was expected so your project is RED.
Frank Winter is right on his understanding of the technique. It works fine and the client is happy to have a simple way to know status and progress.
While on the topic of project office, have you any thoughts on the project office undertaking a macro capacity planning role (related to availability of staff), especially where the IT division acts as a services vendor to the rest of the organisation? It seems to me to be a logical control point to prevent IT agreeing to unrealistic deadlines (yet again) without knowing the true availability of its resources. Saving Changes...
