Musings On Surviving Project Management

1
Musings On Surviving Project Management

• Kent State University
• October, 2001
• Thomas H. Maurer

2
Musings

• Technology Convergence Complexity
• Environmental Factors
• Lessons From Failure
• PM Survival Notes
• 9/11/01 PM Implications
• Wrap Up and QA

3
Technology Convergence and Complexity

• Technology convergence drives usage
• Computing power increases exponentially
• Inexpensive storage
• Commodity-priced communications

4
..And Complexity Increases

• Pent-up demand explodes
• Unrealistic management expectations
• Training gaps
• Skill shortages
• Integrated applications

5
Business Environmental Factors

• .When the world can change faster than your
  organization, you are in trouble.
• Jack Welch

6
The New Realities

• Multinational companies
• New forms of competition
• Partnerships and alliances
• Internet and e-business

7
So, IT Has a New Role

• ..To collapse time and distance for customers.

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And Your CEOs Concerns are

• 48 - Tough price competition
• 43 - Changes in competition
• 41 - Industry consolidation
• 25 - Changing technology
• 15 - Impact of the internet
• (Source The Conference Board)

9
A Most Notable Failure

• The Bank of America determined it was better to
  scrap a 500 million project than to continue to
  invest in its questionable success!

10
And Many Others

• Remember Y2K? While one of the
• biggest non-events in recent memory, it
  nonetheless underscored horrendous past project
  management lapses at all levels of virtually
  every organization!

11
Lessons From Failure

• The business justification is unknown or
  ill-defined
• No senior management project owner
• Underestimated project complexity
• Overestimated organizational capability
• Poorly defined business requirements

12
Lessons Continued

• Pre-determined completion date
• Lack of change disciple
• Poor planning and tracking
• Lack of accountability
• Underestimated impact on the organization
• Poor training

13
So, No Wonder..

• Up to 98 of all projects are over budget, late,
  and are viewed as unsatisfactory by their users
• The average life for a CIO is 18-24 months
• IT is viewed as being ineffective and
  non-responsive by its customers

14
As A Consequence, Organizations Have Tried

• Outsourcing
• New architectures
• Packaged Silver Bullet applications
• New organizations
• New vendors
• New CIOs
• .all with limited or no success

15
PM Survival Notes

• PM Can be successful, but it takes discipline,
  skill and an effective process

16
PM Survival Notes

• There will always be a second release
• Anything over 100 or 200 hours of work must be
  viewed as a project
• The 1-10-100 Rule is very operative in PM
• You never have the right people
• Adding people will extend the delivery date
• Early problem detection is critical

17
Survival Notes - Continued

• Users must have skin in the game
• A senior management sponsor is an absolute
  requirement
• Giving the project change budget to the user
  simplifies life
• Always get agreement on business requirements
  before starting design and development
• There is no such thing as too much project status
  communication

18
Survival Notes - Continued

• All deliverables in 2 weeks or less
• A chunky project, like soup, is a good thing
• No one ever ate an elephant in one bite
• The willingness to support any project is
  inversely related to the length of the project
• Hiding bad news kills credibility and support
• Expect casualties and encourage some
• Celebrate your successes

19
Survival Notes - Continued

• Milestones help morale
• Use your people the right way
• Look for ways to do concurrent development
• Ongoing integrated user testing and impression
  sampling is critical

20
Survival Notes - Continued

• Phased development phased schedule
• Never pick an architecture before you have
  defined business requirements
• Assume every system must have customer access at
  some point in its life cycle
• Security, Security, Security

21
9/11/01 PM Implications

• Evaluate your systems security now!
• Company Security Statement
• Chairperson or CEO Statement of philosophy and
  consequences
• Chief Security Officer
• Personnel screening
• Operations access
• Systems development
• Email and other groupware
• What can be mobile
• B2B and Internet

22
9/11/01 PM Implications - Continued

• B2B Internet Considerations
• Firewalls
• Segregation of request and response data
• Multi-layered security
• User authorization and screening
• Architecture change authority
• Intrusion detection
• Recovery VS redundancy

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9/11/01 PM Implications - Continued

• Organizational Considerations
• How many people concentrated in one spot?
• Cross-training
• Emergency response training
• Contingency planning and testing
• Communications out!
• Hot sites telecommuting revisited

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9/11/01 PM Implications - Continued

• Personnel Implications
• Longer hiring cycles
• Training for PM our new world realities
• Screening and monitoring
• What can be mobile
• Contingency manuals and updates

25
Wrap Up And QA

• PM will always be subject to uncertainty,
  shifting priorities and the vagaries of the
  eternal environment
• You must be willing to accept the fact that, in
  spite of your best efforts, there will be
  surprises
• Do the best you can and keep your resume up to
  date!
• Questions or comments?