Microsoft solutions framework msf viramdas

Microsoft Solutions Framework

It is a Framework

• Goal – adaptable framework – successfully delivering information technology solutions – faster, – requiring fewer people, and – involving less risk, – While enabling higher quality results.

• Not Prescriptive – Flexible scalable approach that can be adapted to suit context

Current Project Challenges

• Disconnected stakeholders WITH – irregular, random, or insufficient business input into the process,

resulting in critical needs going uncaptured.• Teams that don’t understand the business problem

– don’t have clearly defined roles, and– struggle to communicate internally and externally.

• Requirements capture failure – Fail to address the real customer problems, – cannot be implemented as stated– omit important features, & – include unsubstantiated features.

Current Project Challenges

• A vague project approach – Not well understood by the participants, – resulting in confusion, overwork, missing elements, and reduced

solution quality.• Poor hand-off from project teams to operations

– Lengthy delays in realizing business value – Costly workarounds to meet business demands.

MSF – Process Model..

MSF – Foundation Principles

1. Foster open communications2. Work toward a shared vision3. Empower team members4. Establish clear accountability and shared responsibility5. Focus on delivering business value6. Stay agile, expect change7. Invest in quality8. Learn from all experiences

Empowered Team

Resp & Accountability

Invest in Quality

Business Goals

Single Vision

Be Agile /CHANGE

Open Communication

Learn from Experience

Focus on Business Value

• “Experience had taught Thomas Edison to combine commercial and technical considerations. The ‘electric vote recorder,’ the first invention for which Edison received a patent, tallied votes quickly and was intended for use within legislatures. But when he approached a congressional committee about sales, the committee chairman told him, ‘Young man, that is just what we do not want.” (It would infringe on the sacred institution of the filibuster.) His machine was never produced, and he resolved not to devote his attention to the invention of anything that lacked ‘commercial demand.’” - Randall E. Stross

• Business value is a reflection of the value that end customers are ready to bet on the service rendered. To identify the JTBD and the outcome expectation therefore is key

1. Customer Experience 2. Business Value &

Strategy 3. Design Thinking

Model / Discipline

1. Understand customer latent needs and jobs to be done.

2. Business Case definition 3. Continuously map

customer experience

Key Concept

1. Capture JTBD and Outcome Expectations

2. Objective ROI based portfolio

3. Measurement based design in services

Proven Practice

1. JTBD & Outcome Expectations

2. Systems Thinking 3. Instrument, Analyze,

Gamify 4. SOA – portfolio mgmt

Recommendation

Invest in Quality

• Demings concept of zero inspection and the lean concept of systemically solving failures in execution are critical to achieving high level of Quality

• In addition the current insight of understanding and preempting customer needs and managing their experience would be critical in developing services that are appreciated and adopted by end users

• Quality is value. The key is to understand quality in the upstream.. Demand Failure identification is critical to eliminate value-less work that get generated in operations..

1. Customer Experience 2. Failure Demand 3. Zero Inspection 4. Learning from failures

Model / Discipline

1. Anthropologists in design 2. Design thinking 3. Poke – yoke in process 4. Stop on Failures 5. Stable Tech.

Key Concept

1. Poke-Yoke Design 2. Systems thinking 3. Incremental Agile

innovation

Proven Practice

1. Value stream mapping 2. System operator models

Recommendation

Common Shared Vision

• “Before the project gets rolling, a team needs to buy in to a common vision.• Without such a shared vision, high-performance teamwork cannot take

place.A study of 75 teams found that in every case in which the team functioned effectively, the team had a clear understanding of its objective."—Steve McConnell2

• Vision is key to delivery and assessment of success• clarify goals and bring conflicts and mistaken assumptions to light

so they can be resolved.• Clarifying and getting commitment to a shared vision is so important

that it is the primary objective of the first phase of any MSF project.

1. Scope & Integration 2. Team & Workgroup

management

Model / Discipline

1. Top Management & Team Buy-in

Key Concept

1. Good Leadership Quality 2. Systems Thinking

Proven Practice

1. 6 Hat Model 2. Mckinsey – Brick in the

wall 3. Strategy maps

Recommendation

Empower Team Members

• “On the best teams, different individuals provide occasional leadership, taking charge in areas where they have particular strengths. No one is the permanent leader, because that person would then cease to be a peer and the team interaction would begin to break down. The structure of a team is a network, not a hierarchy.“ —Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister4

• Empowered teams accept responsibility for the management of project risks and team readiness and therefore proactively manage such risk and readiness to ensure the greatest probability of success

1. Execution 2. Organization design 3. Structures

Model / Discipline

1. Roles and Responsibilities

2. Latitude for Failures 3. Performance /

measurement

Key Concept

1. Identify individual capabilities

2. Regular mentoring and feedback

Proven Practice

1. HR measurement of people capabilities

2. Systems to support individual actions

Recommendation

Learn from All Experiences

• 99% of all innovation is applied innovation – which means that the innovation insight was already there and re-applied to a specific use case or industry – Genrich Altshuller

• Psychological inertia, defined as a limits that a person thinks through based on experience, training and environment, needs to be overcome to achieve new innovative insights and designs that a breakthrough and disruptive.

1. Learning based Execution

2. Innovative teams

Model / Discipline

1. Psychological inertia 2. Recording Experiences 3. Sharing within teams

Key Concept

1. Triz based innovation 2. Google organization

Approaches

Proven Practice

1. ARIZ – Triz 2. Google – Experiment,

Measure, Scale, Share, 3. Cross learning session 4. Lateral thinking debono 5. 20% own time. Discover

Recommendation

Stay Agile, Expect change

• “On the best teams, different individuals provide occasional leadership, taking charge in areas where they have particular strengths. No one is the permanent leader, because that person would then cease to be a peer and the team interaction would begin to break down. The structure of a team is a network, not a hierarchy.“ —Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister4

• Focus on the Agile Manifesto – Working Outcome based delivery – Face to Face Communication – Collaboration with Customer / Business – Responding to Change

1. Flexibility in delivery and the ability to adopt to change

2. Iterative, Time oriented execution

Model / Discipline

1. Agile Principles 2. Extreme programming

organization

Key Concept

1. Outcome focused delivery models

2. Time and iteration based plans

3. Visual thinking communication

Proven Practice

1. Storyboards, fixed time execution – Iterate

2. Daily Team stand-ups 3. Small coherent work-

groups

Recommendation

Accountability & Responsibility

• “Each [team] member’s relationship to the team must be defined in terms of the role to be assumed and the results the role is to produce. Eventually, any team effort boils down to the assumption of individual responsibilities and accountabilities.”

• They are interdependent for two reasons: – first, out of necessity, since it is impossible to isolate each role’s

work; – second, by preference, since the team will be more effective if

each role is aware of the entire picture

1. Organization design

Model / Discipline

1. R&R in the organization 2. Trickle key outcome

objectives through structure

Key Concept

1. Common vocabulary of outcomes

2. Few and manageable objectives – trickle down

Proven Practice

1. Systems for aligning GNO to organization

2. Internal social networks to converse and mentor

Recommendation

Foster Open Communication

• “Schedule disaster, functional misfits, and system bugs all arise because the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing…. How, then, shall teams communicate with one another? In as many ways as possible. - Frederick P. Brooks, Jr1

• information has to be readily available and actively shared for optimal functioning

1. Communicate2. Messages

Model / Discipline

1. Listen & Share

Key Concept

1. Pre-Emptive Sharing2. Pull based Comm.

Proven Practice

1. Create Voice & data Stores

2. Incentives & encourage share

Recommendation

MSF Team Model

Team Roles – Quality goals

• Every one knows the roles and their owners

•

Process Model - Spiral

• The phases can be viewed as – exploratory,

investigatory, creative, single-minded, & disciplined.

Main Disciplines in MSF

• Project Management – Emphasis is on consensus based

decisions• Risk Management

– Emphasis on every stage of the project

• Readiness Management– successful adoption and realization

of a technology investment.– Current versus desired state of KSA

– During planning, building & managing solutions.

Learning MSF

• MSF Resource Library.– http://www.microsoft.com/msf

• The recommended order for reading the white papers is as follows:– Microsoft Solutions Framework version 3.0 Overview (this

paper)– The MSF Team Model– The MSF Process Model– The MSF Project Management Discipline– The MSF Risk Management Discipline– The MSF Readiness Management Discipline