Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme

Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme

Presented by(facilitator name)

Managing Complexity in the Face of Uncertainty

Ch02: Understanding Project Management Process Groups

Fundamentals of project management 5 process groups 9 knowledge areas Mapping knowledge areas into process groups

Summary of Chapter 2

Ch02: Project Life Cycle Processes

Process Groups

The five Process Groups were originally defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in their standards guidelines called the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).

PMBOK has become standard for the practice of project management worldwide.

Understanding the Fundamentals of Project Management

the history of modern project management dates from the 1950s.

Several definitions have focused on project to be completed on-time, under-budget, and according to client specifications.

definition of the author: project management is ‘‘organized common sense,’’

Project management is a method and set of techniques based on accepted principles of management used for planning, estimating, and controlling work activities to reach a desired result on time, within budget and according to specification.

(PMBOK)

Project management is organized common sense supported by the tools, templates and processes to guarantee satisfying client requirements and delivering business value.

(Robert K. Wysocki)

Definition of Project Management


Understanding the Fundamentals


all valid project management methodologies must be reducible to answering the following six simple questions: What business situation is being addressed? What do you need to do? What will you do? How will you do it? How will you know you did it? How well did you do?

Great project manager

•You can learn to be a cook and be able to follow recipes, or you can learn to be a chef and be able to create recipes for cooks to follow.

•The sign of a great project manager is one who can quickly adapt when a project does not meet the exact requirements of the approach being used or a surprise arises during the course of doing the project.

What Business Situation Is Being Addressed?

The situation may be either of the following:

1)A project that corrects a problem.

2) A project that takes advantage of a untapped business opportunity.

A project that corrects a problem

• the company is experiencing less than acceptable process performance

•a system no longer meets the needs for which it was originally put in place

•business conditions or requirements have changed, and the system needs to change as well

• legal requirements and regulations have changed, and systems need to be updated.

•The project being proposed may address all or some part of the problem.

A project that takes advantage of a untapped business opportunity.

This could come about as a result of changing market conditions or the emergence of a new or improved technology.

What Do You Need to Do?

What the client wants may not be what the client needs, and it is up to you, the project manager, to identify the client’s true needs.

clients will often express their wants as their attempt at proposing a solution to an unstated problem.

The solution should address the client’s real needs, and you must convince them that it is the needs not the wants that you will address.

What Will You Do?

Once you understand what is needed, you and the client have to decide what can be done to meet that need.

Of course you would like to meet all client requirements, but that may not be possible.

A partial solution may be all that you can provide, and others will have to pick up the pieces and provide additional parts of the solution.

Even after you have made a choice to use what you believe to be the best-fit model, you will have to modify it at the beginning of the project or at points along the way.

How Will You Do It?

This is your plan for delivering an acceptable solution.

how long it will take, what resources will be needed, and how much the solution will cost

When you can’t build that ideal plan, you will have to use some variant of a just-in-time planning model Plan a little, do a little, and continue in that repetitive

fashion until the project is completed..

How Will You Know You Did It?

An acceptable solution will meet both client requirements and business success criteria.

Client requirements are what the client believes define the best way to meet those business success criteria.

If satisfying client requirements does result in the best solution, then those business success criteria will have been met as well.

success criteria should be stated at the beginning of the project in such a way that it is obvious that by the end of the project they have or have not been met.

How Well Did You Do?

The project work is complete, and the solution has been implemented. It’s time for the post-mortem.

There are two different things to consider in analyzing how well you did:1) The first is the quality of the product that was

produced by the project.

2) The second thing to consider is the process that was followed to produce the product.

The quality of the product that was produced by the project

Did the project meet the client requirements, and did it achieve the business success criteria that justified doing the project in the first place?

a complete requirements definition cannot be done at the beginning of the project. Instead, the requirements list is a changing and expanding list that evolves over the life of the project.

Requirements are learned and discovered during the

course of executing the project plan.

the process that was followed to produce the product

How well defined and documented were the project management processes you chose to use?

How well did the chosen processes fit the needs of the project?

How well did the team follow the chosen processes? How well did the chosen processes produce the expected

results? Answers to the first two questions provide input to needed

project management process improvements, and answers to the last two questions will provide input to needed practice improvement efforts (for example, training needs or improved processes for making project assignments).

Defining the Five Process Groups

whatever project management life cycle model you use must contain all of the Process Groups

The Planning Process Group

The Scoping Process Group

The Launching Process Group

The Closing Process Group

The Monitoring & Controlling

Process Group

The Five Project Management Process Groups


Develop and gain approval of a general statement of the goal and business value of the project.

Identify work to be done and estimate time, cost and resource requirements and gain approval.

Recruit the team and establish team operating rules.

Respond to change requests and resolve problem situations to maintain project progress.

Assure attainment of client requirements and install deliverables.


PMBOK calls this the Initiating Process Group.

However, the term initiating can be confusing. The author find the term scoping to be clearer.

This Process Group includes all processes related to answering the question ‘‘What do you need to do?’’

It does not include any processes related to doing any

project work. That project work is defined in the Planning Process Group to be done later in the project life cycle.

The Scoping Process Group....

The Scoping Process Group also includes establishing the business success criteria that will be the metrics used to answer the question ‘‘How will you know you did it?’’


The Project Management Process Groups


Develop and gain approval of a general statement of the goal and business value of the project.

Recruiting the project manager Eliciting the true needs of the client Documenting the client’s needs Negotiating with the client how these needs will be met Writing a one-page description of the project Gaining senior management approval to plan the project


The Planning Process Group includes all processes related to answering the question ‘‘How will you do it?’’




Identify work to be done and estimate time, cost and resource requirements and gain approval to do the project.

Defining all of the work of the project Estimating how long it will take to complete this work Estimating the resources required to complete the work Estimating the total cost of the work Sequencing the work Building the initial project schedule Analyzing & adjusting the project schedule Writing a risk management plan Documenting the project plan Gaining senior management approval to launch the project


PMBOK calls this the Executing Process Group. It is that and more.

The Launching Process Group includes all processes

related to recruiting and organizing the team and establishing the team operating rules. These processes are preparatory to executing the project.

The Launching Process Group also includes all of the processes related to getting the project work started. These would be the executing processes.




Recruit the team and establish team operating rules.

Recruiting the project team Writing the Project Description Document Establishing team operating rules Establishing the scope change management process Managing team communications Finalizing the project schedule Writing work packages

The Launching Process Group….

During the execution of this Process Group, the entire team may be coming together for the first time. There will be client members and your delivery team members present. Perhaps they are mostly strangers to one another. At this point, they are nothing more than a group. They are not yet a team but must become one in very short order.

the project manager will conduct that first team meeting with care, giving team members an opportunity to introduce themselves and what they bring to the project to the other team members.

The Monitoring & Controlling

Process Group



Respond to change requests and resolve problem situations to maintain project progress.

Monitoring project performance Establishing the project performance and reporting system Monitoring risk Reporting project status Processing scope change requests Discovering and solving problems

The Monitoring and Controlling Process Group….

Here is where the real work of the project takes place.

As problems and change requests arise, the strength of your relationship with your client will in large measure contribute to the success or failure of the project.


The Closing Process Group includes all processes related to the completion of the project, including answers to the question ‘‘How well did you do?’’




Assure attainment of client requirements and install deliverables.

Gaining client approval of having met project requirements Planning and installing deliverables Writing the final project report Conducting the post-implementation audit

Defining the Nine Knowledge Areas

The nine Knowledge Areas are part of the PMBOK and are all present in every project management life cycle.

They define the processes within each Process Group and often are part of more than one Process Group.

The Nine Project Management Knowledge Areas


Integration Management Scope Management Time Management Cost Management Quality Management Human Resources Management Communications Management Risk Management Procurement Management

Mapping Knowledge Areas to Process Groups

What the Mapping Means

This mapping shows how interdependent the Knowledge Areas are with the Process Groups.

For example, eight of the nine Knowledge Areas are

started during the Planning Process Group and executed during the Monitoring and Control Process Group.

Mapping Knowledge Areas to Process Groups


Knowledge Areas Scoping Process Group

Planning Process Group

Launching Process Group

Monitoring & Controlling

Process Group

Closing Process Group

Integration X X X X X

Scope X X

Time X X

Cost X X

Quality X X X

HR X X X

Communications X X X

Risk X X

Procurement X X X X

Table02-01

How to Use the Mapping

The mapping provides an excellent blueprint for designing your project management approach to a project.

For example, Procurement Management spans the

Planning, Launching, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing Process Groups.

Therefore, a PMLC model for Procurement Management will be effective if it has components in each of those Process Groups

Definition of a Project Management Life Cycle

A project management life cycle (PMLC) is a sequence of processes that includes scoping, planning, launching, monitoring, controlling, and closing the projects to which it applies.

The Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC)


Contrary to Public Opinion Process, Groups are not a PMLC.

Process Groups will be mapped to form Complex PMLCs.

by properly sequencing and perhaps repeating some Process Groups, you can define PMLCs that are project management methodologies. So theProcess Groups are the building blocks of project management methodologies. the processes within a Process Group are the detailed building blocks of the phases of the PMLC.

Integration Management

This knowledge area addresses the glue that links all of the deliverables from the Process Groups into a unified whole.

Scope Management

The major focus of the Scope Management Knowledge Area is the identification and documentation of client requirements.

This linkage begins with the project description document and extends to the project plan and its execution, including monitoring progress against the project plan and the integration of changes, and finally through to project closure.

Scope Management – Client Wants vs. Client Needs

What your client wants may not be what your client needs.

WANTS

NEEDS


Scope Management

Following requirements gathering and documentation, you choose the best-fit project management life cycle and develop the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) that defines the work to be done to deliver those requirements.

That prepares the team and the client with the information they need to estimate time, cost, and resource requirements.

The Scope Management Knowledge Area overlaps the Scoping and the Planning Process Groups.

Time Management

Time management includes both a planning component and a control component.

The planning component provides time estimates for both the duration of a project task (that is, how long will it take in terms of clock time to complete the task) and the actual effort or labor time required to complete the task.

The duration is used to estimate the total time needed to complete the project.

The labor time is used to estimate the total labor cost of the project.

Time Management….

The control component is part of the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group and involves comparing estimated times to actual times as well as managing the schedule and cost variances.

Cost Management

Cost management includes both a planning component and a control component.

The planning component includes building the project budget and mapping those costs into the project schedule. This provides a means of controlling the consumption of budget dollars across time.

Variance reports and earned value reports are used in the Monitoring and Controlling Process Group.

Fit for use Meets all client requirements Delivered on time within budget and according

to client specifications

Quality Management – Definition of Quality


Quality refers to meeting agreed requirements not exceeding them.

‘‘delight the client’’ ??

Process Quality The quality of the project management

process that produced the product

Product Quality The quality of the deliverables from the

project

Quality Management – Types of Quality


Quality Management – Consists of:

Quality planning

Quality assurance

Quality control

Project Quality Management


Determine relevant quality standards for the project and what you can do to satisfy them

These may be external to the organization (federal or agency quality requirements) or internal (company policies and guidelines).

In addition, there will be project-specific requirements that must be met.

Quality planning must integrate all of these into a cohesive program.

Quality Planning


Quality assurance includes activities that ensure compliance to the plan.

Quality Assurance


Monitor project performance to determine compliance to quality standards and how to eliminate non-compliance.

This will be accomplished by using project management tools, templates and processes.

Quality Control


Human Resource Management

Staff development is one area where project manager and the line manager share responsibility.

The line manager is responsible for assigning people to

projects in accordance with each person’s skill and competency profile as well as his or her career and professional development plans.

Once a person is assigned to a project, it is then the

project manager’s responsibility to make assignments in accordance with the person’s skill and competency profile and their professional development plans.

Human Resource Management….

Having motivated team members is in the best interest of the project, the project manager, and the organization.

When you align people’s interests and professional development needs to their project assignments, you gain a stronger commitment from the team members.


Projects as Motivation and Development Tools

Not everyone can be motivated.

In most cases all that the manager can do is create an environment in which the subordinate might be motivated and then hope that he or she is.

Project manager must create a working environment that

is conducive to and encourages the development of the team members, leaving it up to them to respond positively.


Motivators and Hygiene factors Motivators are behaviors or situations that have a positive

impact on the worker— they motivate the worker to better performance.

Hygiene factors, on the other hand, are things that, by their

absence, have a negative impact on performance, but don’t necessarily motivate the worker if they are present. For example, workers expect a reasonable vacation policy; to not have one acts as a demotivator. Conversely, having a good vacation policy does not necessarily motivate the worker.

Human Resources Management


Projects as Motivators Achievement Recognition Advancement and Growth Responsibility Work Itself

Hygiene Factors Company Policy Administrative Practices Working Conditions Technical Supervision Interpersonal Relations Job Security Salary


Motivators and Hygiene factors

Motivators are related to the job, specifically to its intrinsic characteristics, whereas hygiene factors are related to the environment in which the job is performed.

The good news is that the manager has some amount of control over the motivators relating to the job.

The bad news is that the hygiene factors, being environmental, are usually beyond the control of the project manager.


Motivators and Hygiene factors….

As a project manager, you can bring hygiene factors to the attention of your senior management, but you’re otherwise powerless to change them.

Motivating Factors

The following is a combined list from highest motivator to lowest motivator Challenge Recognition Job Design Skill Variety Task Identity Task Significance Autonomy Feedback

Motivating Factors…

The motivators that are high on the list tend to be intrinsic to the job, such as: providing opportunities for advancement and recognition,

whereas the demotivators, which are lower on the list, tend to be environmental factors such as working conditions (for example, parking areas) and company policy (for example, sick leave and

vacation time).

Motivating Factors…

Several of the motivators are directly controlled or influenced by actions and behaviors of the project manager regarding the work that the team member will be asked to do. They are as follows: Challenge

Recognition

Job Design

Challenge

Professionals respond to a challenge

Professionals dread nothing more than practicing skills, long since mastered, over and over again.

Recognition

Professionals want to know that they are progressing toward a professional goal.

Publicly and personally recognizing achievements and following with additional challenges tells the professional that his or her contribution is valued.

Recognition, therefore, does not necessarily

mean dollars, promotions, or titles.

Job Design

The following five dimensions define a job:

Skill variety Task identity Task significance Autonomy Feedback

Skill variety

Jobs that do not offer much task variety or the opportunity to learn and practice new skills become boring for most people

This variety, at the very least, can provide a diversion from what otherwise would be a tedious and boring workday.

It can also provide a break during which the person can learn a new skill.

Task identity

People need to know what they are working on.

The project manager should help them

understand their work in relation to the entire project.

Knowing that their task is on the critical path will affect their attitude and the quality of their work.

Task significance

workers ask themselves questions such as these: Does it make any difference if I am successful? If I am late, will anybody notice? Just how important is my work to the overall success

of the project? Am I just doing busywork to pass the time?

Team members need to know whether their effort and success make any difference to the success of the project.

Autonomy

Professionals want to know what is expected from them— what are the deliverables?

They don’t want to hear every detail of how they will accomplish their work.

They want to make that decision themselves.

They want to exercise their creativity. They want freedom, independence, and discretion in scheduling their work and determining the procedures they will follow to carry it out.

Feedback

Good, bad, or indifferent, professionals want to know how effective they are in their work.

Communication Management

At the heart of many of the top ten reasons why projects fail is poor communications.

It is not difficult to plan an effective communications management process, but it seems to be very difficult to execute that plan.

A good communications management process will have provisions in the process that answer the following questions: Who are the project stakeholders? What do they need to know about the project? How should their needs be met?

Who Are the Project Stakeholders?

Any person or group that has a vested interest in the project is a stakeholder. Those who are required to provide some input to the project

affect the project and are therefore stakeholders. They may not be willing stakeholders, but they are stakeholders nevertheless.

Those who are affected by the project are stakeholders. Often they are the same group requesting the project, in which

case they will be willing stakeholders. There will also be unwilling stakeholders who are affected by

the project but had little or no say in how the project actually delivered against stated requirements.

What Do They Need to Know about the Project?

There will be a range of concerns and questions coming from every stakeholder group. What input will I be required to provide the project team? How can I make my needs known? When will the project be done? How will it affect me? Will I be replaced? How will I learn how to use the deliverables?

Your communications management plan will be effective only if it accounts for each group and their individual needs.

How Should Their Needs Be Met?

Chapter 5 provides all of the details on building an effective communications management plan.

Risk Management – The Life Cycle

risk identification

risk assessment

risk mitigation

risk monitoring & control


What are the risks? What is the probability of loss that results from them? How much are the losses likely to cost? What might the losses be if the worst happens? What are the alternatives? How can the losses be reduced or eliminated? Will the alternatives produce other risks?

Effective project managers treat risk management as a dynamic part of every project

Risk Management

In project management, a risk is some future event that happens with some probability and results in a change, either positive or negative, to the project.

For the most part, risk is associated with loss, at least in the traditional sense.

The result might be a cost increase, a schedule slippage, or some other catastrophic change.

The cost of loss can be estimated. The estimate is the mathematical product of the probability that the event will occur and the severity of the loss if it does.

Risk Management….

This estimate will force the project manager to make a choice about what to do, if anything, to mitigate the risk and reduce the loss that will occur.

This estimate is the basis of a series of choices that the project manager has to make. First of all, should any action be taken? If the cost of the action

exceeds the estimated loss, no action should be taken. Simply hope that the event doesn’t occur.

The second choice deals with the action to be taken. If action is called for, what form should it take?

Risk Management….

Some actions may simply reduce the probability that the event will occur. Other actions will reduce the loss that results from the occurrence of the event.

It is usually not possible to reduce either the probability or the loss to zero.

Risk Management – Risk Identification

risk identification

risk assessment

risk mitigation



Technical risks Project management risks Organizational risks External risks

Risk Management – Risk Assessment

risk identification

risk assessment

risk mitigation



What is the probability of loss that results from them? How much are the losses likely to cost? What might the losses be if the worst happens?

If you are certain that an event will occur, it’s not a risk; it’s a certainty. This type of event isn’t handled by risk management. Because you are sure that it will occur, no probability is involved. No probability, no risk.

Risk Assessment…

There are two major factors in assessing risk. The first one is the probability that the risk event will

occur. The second part of risk assessment is the impact

the risk will have on the project.

To assign a numerical score to a risk event, you simply multiply the probability of the risk occurring times the impact that the event’s occurrence would have.

Risk Management – Risk Mitigation

risk identification

risk assessment

risk mitigation



What are the alternatives? How can the losses be reduced or eliminated?

Accept Avoid Contingency planning Mitigate Transfer

Will the alternatives produce other risks?

Risk Mitigation…

The next step in risk management is to plan, as much as possible, the responses that will be used if the identified risks occur.

you should have some type of action in mind. It’s not enough to simply list the risks; you need to plan to do something about the risk events should they occur.

Examples late delivery of key equipment. key person leaves the company before finishing the work

Risk Mitigation…

There are five different risk responses: Accept. There is nothing that can be done to mitigate the

risk. You just have to accept it and hope it does not occur.

Avoid. The project plan can be modified so as to avoid the situation that creates the risk.

Contingency planning. If the risk event occurs, what will you do?

Mitigate. What will you do to minimize the impact should the risk event occur?

Transfer. Pass the impact should the risk event occur (i.e., buy an insurance policy).

Risk Management – The Life Cycle

risk identification

risk assessment

risk mitigation



Risk Log

Risk Log: This document lists all risks that you want to manage, identifies who is supposed to manage the risk, and specifies what should be done to manage the risk event.

Procurement Management – The Life Cycle

VendorSolicitation

VendorSelection


professional project manager should ensurethat the organization is getting the right materials at the best cost or the bestservices at the best cost.

Vendor Solicitation

prepare procurement documents for solicitation. These documents, called Requests for Proposals (RFPs), are what vendors use to determine if and how they should respond to your needs.

The clearer the RFP, the better off you and the vendor are, because you will be providing basic information about what you want

Many organizations have a procurement office.

Vendor Solicitation…

If you don’t have a procurement office, you need to prepare a document to send to the vendors. You’ll want to have a lead writer (preferably not you)

and someone from the legal department to ensure that

what you’ve asked for in the document is clear and forms the basis for a contract between you and the vendor.

Vendor Evaluation

Before you even start reading the responses to your proposal, set the standards for choosing a given vendor.

These criteria may be based on technical expertise, experience, or cost,

but whatever criteria you use, it must remain the same for all of the vendors.

Vendor Selection

The result of vendor evaluation usually does not produce a single best choice.

There will most likely be several competing vendors for all or parts of the work.

So you have another decision to make and that is which vendor or vendors will win your business.

Vendor Contracting

Contract management involves the following:

1. The vendor must supply you with deliverable dates so that you can determine whether the project is on time.

2. The vendor should also supply a WBS detailing how the vendor breaks down the scope of the project and showing the tasks that make up the completion of a deliverable.

3. The project manager should hold regular status meetings to track progress. Meetings should be formal and occur on specified dates. They should occur at least once a week. They will give you an idea of how the vendor is proceeding in fulfilling the contract

Procurement Management Life Cycle

VendorSolicitation

VendorEvaluation

VendorSelection

VendorManagement

VendorContracting

Set vendor expectations Monitor progress and performance Conduct acceptance testing Transition from vendor to client


Vendor Management

1. There should be a clear understanding of when the project is finished. When you write your RFP, state clearly how

the project finishes. That is often done by writing a project acceptance test procedure. It is nothing more than a checklist of what the client views as a completed project and what the final deliverable is.

Vendor Management…

2. After the contract is closed, make sure you file all of the materials used during the project. These materials include:

• the original RFP, • the project baseline, • the scope statement, • the WBS, • the various plans used to manage the project, and • all changes, including those that were requested but turned

down.

3. Put all this information into a large file and keep it

Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme

Documents

effective project management

practice of project

great project manageryou

pmbokproject management

business situation

client needs

business value

satisfying client requirements