Richard J. Bocchinfuso

Discussion

Discussion Question: Bruce’s website development project is nearing an end, and upper management must decide what to do with the resources associated with the project. Bruce’s team met all schedule and expenditure goals, but the product they produced (a video-swapping online destination) has underperformed in terms of ad revenue and visitors. Which form of termination would you recommend upper management consider for Bruce’s project? (p. 420 Project Management Textbook)

Based on the project termination types defined in the text, I believe the best form of termination for this project would be “project extinction”
(Portny, 2008, p. 414).

I believe “project extinction” is the proper form project termination because the website development project is nearing the end (suddenly stopping), and while it met schedule and budget goals the project has a high probability of failure due to revenue and site traffic underperformance. At the termination of the project, there will be resources to be reassigned; there may also be intellectual property and other assets that may have reuse.

References

Portny, Stanley E. (2008). Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Assignment

In the video for this week, a risk and mitigation plan was discussed.  Develop a partial risk and mitigation plan for three different risks that could be affiliated with a construction project to add a new facility on a college campus.  The partial risk and mitigation plan need to include the rank, title, risk description, probability of occurrence, impact if it occurs, and the earliest/latest the risk impact could occur.  The other sections of the risk and mitigation plan are not necessary for this assignment.

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Week 8 Exam (#4):  80%

Exhausted, should have done better, stupid mistakes!!

Discussion

Discussion Question #1: Your organization has effective systems in place to track work-effort and expenditures, but needs to do a better job at monitoring quality
How can Six Sigma be beneficial for an IT project?

Six Sigma focused on better understanding project requirements, improving quality and delivery, reducing cost and waste while improving competitive position through continuous improvement.

Six Sigma takes Total Quality Managment (TQM) and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) to the next level. By leveraging the value of TQM and CQI, and adding customer focus, empirical data analysis systems, financial results and project management. M

Six Sigma is a framework which tackles both organizational structures as well as project methodology. This approach focuses on:

• Continuous improvement, driving towards zero defect delivery, thus improving the overall quality.
• Cost savings by increasing efficiency, removing waste and reducing variations. This practice is often referred to as Lean Six Sigma. With ties to lean manufacturing.
• Streamlined communications, transparency and teamwork.
• Improve the total customer experience.

Agile and Six Sigma share similar principles, but Six Sigma’s focus on process standardization and reducing variances seem to contradict the Agile approach. The emergence of practices like Lean IT and DevOps seek more closely align frameworks like Agile, and Six Sigma with IT use cases. The emerging IT operating models take the best principles from differing structures to deliver a framework which has roots but is even more applicable to the ever-changing IT landscape.

References

Anbari, F. T. (2012, October 3). Six sigma method and its applications in project management. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/six-sigma-method-applications-pm-8515

Edmead, M. (2015, July 21). Lean IT and DevOps: The new kids on the block. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.cio.com/article/2900051/agile-development/lean-it-and-devops-the-new-kids-on-the-block.html

Zucjer, D. (n.d.). Integrating Project Management into a Six Sigma System. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.isixsigma.com/methodology/project-management/integrating-project-management-six-sigma-system/

Gullo, D. J. (2016, October 21). Agile in General. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2731927&seqNum=3

Rogers, G. (2016, December 16). Why DevOps is the Future of IT. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.processexcellencenetwork.com/pex-tools-technologies/columns/why-devops-is-the-future-of-it

Williams, P. H. (n.d.). Zero Defects: What Does It Achieve? What Does It Mean? Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.isixsigma.com/new-to-six-sigma/sigma-level/zero-defects-what-does-it-achieve-what-does-it-mean/

Discussion Question #2: Research IT Governance. To begin, here is one link on the topic: http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/Val-IT-IT-Value-Delivery-/Documents/IT-Value-Special-Compilation.pdf
What are three important IT governance ideas you have for contributing towards a successful IT Project? 

IT governance is a way to align IT strategy and business strategy. IT governance frameworks such as ITIL and COBIT create a structure and best practices to govern various aspects of IT.

The three ideas that I have that contribute to a successful IT project are:

1.  Focus on delivering stakeholder value (aka, be customer centric).

2.  Favor accountability and agility over rigidity and responsibility

This can be a difficult cultural shift; many cultures are overly focused on rigid and detailed maps for success, confused by the idea that there is no play for a fumble recovery, everyone just runs to the ball. Today’s high-performing organizations look at this in two ways

1. They need a framework that is standards-based and is easy for people to understand, something like ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) framework.
2. Culturally everyone on the field needs to run to the ball and hold their peers accountable for not putting in 110% every time.

The importance of a high-performance culture cannot be overlooked.

3. Fail fast and focus on continuous improvement. Quickly determine if an idea or a direction have merit, make a quick pivot when an idea or an approach is not working, rather than locking into a rigid plan that delivers a low yield.

References

ISACA (2008). Enterprise Value: Governance of IT Investments: The Val IT™ Framework 2.0. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from http://www.isaca.org/Knowledge-Center/Val-IT-IT-Value-Delivery-/Documents/IT-Value-Special-Compilation.pdf

Lindros, K. (2017, July 31). What is IT governance? A formal way to align IT & business strategy. Retrieved February 21, 2018, from https://www.cio.com/article/2438931/governance/governanceit-governance-definition-and-solutions.html

What is fail fast? – Definition from WhatIs.com. (n.d.). Retrieved February 21, 2018, from http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/fail-fast

Discussion

Discussion Question:  Two team members on the large multidisciplinary product testing team you project manage are consistently late turning in weekly reports. When you spoke with each of the team members individually, they both said, essentially, that you aren’t their manager so getting their reports to you is of secondary importance to them. What are two specific things you can do to encourage these team members to contribute to the project on time? (p. 312 Project Management Textbook)

I have this saying use all the time “agility and accountability over rigidity and responsibility”. For me, the best teams are agile and accountable, while these teams are capable of following the vision and structure created they are also dynamic enough to pivot when required. Contrast this with the rigid and responsible team who is adverse to change, struggles to work as a team or be accountable for that which they don’t have direct responsibility.  In short, build “agile and accountable” self-managing teams.

Project managers have a difficult job, the project manager has to manage diverse teams with limited direct power. I believe that communication and constituency are keys to success, the project manager has to lead by clearly articulating a vision/purpose and getting people on board (garnering buy-in and building a constituency). The text references exploring the “why” (Portny, 2008, p. 218). There is a great TEDx talk by Simon Sinek that I think captures the power of starting with “why”.

Simon Sinek at TEDx: How great leaders inspire action
Sinek also has a book entitled “Start With Why” which further explores the ideas conveyed in the TEDx talk.

The text discusses power and influence, for me influence is power. The question is how to establish influence?  In my opinion, the best way to do this is through contribution, the ability to understand the “why”, communicating the “why” to others and inspiring them is one way to contribute, subject matter expertise is another way to contribute. Regardless of the method of contribution, constituents don’t want to be commanded by you they want to be collaborating with you. In my opinion, achieved power is far more effective than ascribed power.

Given the specific problem with the two team members outlined I think there are two things, the project manager needs to ascertain.

• Is the individual’s direct managers goals aligned with the project.
  • If the messaging from direct management is not aligned with the project goals is is likely a big reason for why the work is being turned in late.
  • If direct management is aligned with the project goals, it might make sense to involve this person in a discussion with the problematic team member so they can realize that their direct management supports the project.
• Assuming the direct line manager is fully onboard with the project and has made this clear to the team member, it is possible that either this is just the wrong person for the team or maybe the wrong role on the team.
  • The project manager should explore if and how they can garner buy-in from this individual.
  • If they can’t garner buy-in they should quickly look to make a change.

References

Portny, Stanley E. (2008). Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Week 6 Exam (#3):  90%

Discussion

Discussion Question: You create person loading charts for the three members of a research team you’re managing for the next month. For this project, a full-time commitment is 40 hours a week. However, you find that team member #1 is committed 40, 45, 60, and 30 hours per week; team member #2 is committed 40, 40, 20 and 20 hours per week; team member #3 is committed 60, 40, 60 and 20 hours per week. Assuming your team members are similarly qualified, what are some options you have for resource leveling to avoid over committing resources? (p. 243 of Project Management Textbook)

As per the text (Portny, 2008, p. 218) project managers can use various techniques to level resource and avoid resource overcommitment, these include:

• Allocating time unevenly over the duration of one or more activities.
• Taking advantage of any slack time that may exist in assigned activities.
• Reallocate work from overallocated resources to under allocated resources.
• Add additional resources to the project.
• Leverage external labor (i.e. – vendors or contractors) to offload work from overallocated resources.

I this example resources #1 and #3 are clearly overcommitted.
Resource #1: 40 + 45 + 60 + 30 = 175 / 4 = 43.75 avg/hrs/wk
Resource #2: 40 + 40 + 20 + 20 = 120 / 4 = 30 avg/hrs/wk
Resource #3: 60 +40 + 60 + 20 = 180 / 4 = 45 avg/hrs/wk

Above we can see that between resources #1 and #2 there is an aggregate overcommitment of 8.75 hrs/wk while resource #2 is under committed by 10 hours per week. In this case, the most straightforward solution given that all the resources are similarly qualified is to reallocate work from resources #1 and #3 to resource #2 leveling out the resource allocation across the three available resources.

References

Portny, Stanley E. (2008). Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Assignment

Cause and Effects Diagram were discussed on the video this week. Develop a Cause and Effect Diagram that pertain to the development and launch of a new corporate Web site which requires team members to have very specific programming skills.

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