Project Estimating

As Project Managers we are involved in providing project estimates almost all the time. I have recently been working on a lot of project estimates.

While reading some of my favorite authors articles I found this article, “What Causes Bad Estimates…And What You Can Do About It” by Dr. James T. Brown both relevant and timely.

I would love to hear what others think about the practice of providing estimates.

Do you give in to the pressure to underestimate the project so the project is either sold or moves forward or do you stand your ground and communicate what it actually takes to make the project successful?

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

   

Catch Dr. James Brown at Nexus

Just a quick note for PM’s in the Pacific Northwest.  Dr. James Brown is conducting a class on conflict management at the Nexus conference in Seattle (Bellevue, WA) on Wednesday, November 2^nd.  I’ve been doing project and program management all over the world for the better part of 15 years and this guy is worth checking out.  Yes he has a PhD, is a published author, worked for NASA and all of that, but more importantly, he knows his subject matter as good or better than anyone in the business.  His teaching methodology and project management philosophy achieve the right balance between ‘the book’, best practices and common sense.  He also has a strong focus on human behavior and what that means in the context of project management. There are teachers and speakers, and then there are the people that you make sure to see every time they are in town.  Dr. Brown is one of the latter.  I encourage you to take the opportunity to go see him and take his class at the Nexus conference.

 

Gene Echkart
Program Manager
ImageSource Inc.

Nexus is Coming!

The ImageSource NEXUS ECM conference is fast approaching.  NEXUS is a unique opportunity for you to discover:

• How companies lever ECM beyond traditional Account Payable Invoice processes
• Lean about Enterprise Content Management industry trends (Cloud, Mobile Technologies, Social Media, to name a few)
• Invaluable opportunities to meeting and collaborate with industry peers
• Attend certified educational seminars
• View current ECM related technologies
• Participate in one on one sessions with industry technical and business experts
• Hear about using ECM as a tactical advantage is solving today’s business issues

All this as well as the ability to earn industry accreditations:

1. Project Management Professionals (up to 20 PDU’s)
2. Certified Records Managers (10 ICRM CMP Credits)
3. Healthcare Professionals (16 AHIMA Credits)
4. Accounts Payable Processionals (IAPP Credits)
5. Business Analysts (IIBA Credits)
6. American Payroll Association (3.5 RCHs)

NEXUS is a conference you can’t afford to miss!

Hope to see you there.

 

NEXUS 2011
November 3 – 4, 2011
Meydenbauer Convention Center, Bellevue Washington
To learn more: www.nexusecm.com

 

David MacWatters
ImageSource, Inc

 

Exciting BPM Workflow Discovery Workshop

If you have a Business Process Management (BPM) workflow project coming up soon, don’t miss the Nexus 2011 conference in Bellevue, Washington on November 3^rd and 4^th.  One of our teams is conducting a BPM workflow discovery workshop that is built entirely on audience participation.  It’s the Business Process Management – Discovery & Problem Resolution Strategy Workshop scheduled for Friday morning (4^th).  It’s a two session workshop and we’re going to take audience members (PM’s, SE’s and BA’s) to form a project team.  We’ll provide them with a business case scenario with BPM workflow requirements and then facilitate them working through the discovery process.  We’ll make sure that they run into lots of the common challenges we see on BPM workflow projects and then watch to see how they sort it out.  It’s a serious subject and we will share best practices approaches to solving these common problems, but we intend to have as much fun as we can in the process!  We look forward to seeing you there and having you participating as part of our workshop project team.  Don’t miss it!

Gene Eckhart
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc

Plan for Differences

Oktoberfest – the largest party in the world is currently being held in Munich. As a project manager, I would love to see the project plan details for preparing and hosting a party attended by 7 million people and dealing with the drunken patrons locally called “Bierleichen” (German for beer corpses).

It would also be interesting to see what the original project plan looked like back in 1810 when Oktoberfest first started as a celebration of the wedding of Prince Ludwig. Imagine how much historians and anthropologists would learn if they were able to review and compare project plans for historical events such as Oktoberfest? Think about how the Oktoberfest project planning requirements have changed over time to reflect new technologies such as electricity, refrigeration, transportation or how regulations related to health, sanitation, crowd control, and security issues have been integrated into the project requirements.

ECM project may take years for enterprise deployment and start out as departmental solutions – with the first CM project typically implemented to address the business concerns of a high volume content area such as Legal, AP, Contracts, or Human Resources. Later CM projects are added (hopefully) over time as budget and resources are available until eventually there is a true ECM system within the organization.

How have your subsequent CM project plans changed over time after the first rollout? Underlying this question is the assumption that your organization has a central governance structure responsible for information assets to insure that subsequent CM projects maintain corporate standards for content or records management. Additionally does each of your CM project plans include standards reviews to reflect business, legal, compliance and audit standards? Just as the planners for Oktoberfest revise their plans every year, do you continually revise each CM project plan

• To include new content sources and document types
• To reflect new information requirements imposed by enterprise/federated search
• To address new BI or reporting tools implemented within the organization
• To leverage new technologies such as cloud storage
• To optimize content retrieval from new sources such as smart phones and pad devices

Prior to the next CM rollout project phase – spend some time upfront thinking about what has changed within your organization since the last rollout – and how those changes may present opportunities (or risks) to your upcoming endeavor.

Prior to refrigeration – beer was not produced in the summer months in Germany and would spoil by the end of summer. To avoid such a calamity – a large party was held at the end of summer to consume the old stock of beer! As noted previously – this beer drinking party officially became Oktoberfest in 1810.

Steve Kissinger

ImageSource, Inc.

Take a step back to educate!

As project managers – we’re used to dealing with and preparing for uncertainty and risks.  If you were managing a project to improve an existing product or develop a new product, you would most likely be dealing with a project sponsor who was an operations or product manager who could clearly articulate his/her goals and requirements.  In essence your project risk right out of the gate is lessened with explicit project goals and a well-defined set of requirements.

In managing ECM projects we’re often dealing with projects where scope definitions and project requirements are somewhat vague – in part because the technology is new to many people, and thus there is a large amount of uncertainty about exactly what benefits CM solutions can provide.

How much time do you spend on an ECM project providing basic education services around ECM technology, and essentially helping your client define what they’re missing and potentially what the ECM project should or possibly could do?  More importantly, how much time do you spend half-way through your project dealing with changed expectations and new requirements once your client has a better ‘feel’ or understanding of what is possible and what they initially missed?

Just a thought – think about adding an introductory phase to your ECM project whose sole deliverable is an education program with the goal of ensuring that subsequent phases have well thought out requirements definitions?

Steve Kissinger

ImageSource, Inc.

Ready – Set – GO! with ERM

If you are in the process of reviewing your companies Enterprise Records Management (ERM) strategies and are not sure how to get started, here are some helpful hints to get you going. 

When starting out with ERM it will be useful to first take a look at what kind of an organization you are. Are you a global leader with industry-specific requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley (SOX)? Or are you a small to large size establishment with moderate needs? Do you have an existing ECM system with a RM Module that can be added on, or is this new to your organization? The answer to this question will determine what level of compliance and continuity to start your research and develop a business case and program assessment for a new ERM system.  

An ERM implementation for a global bank will be significantly different than a local county or small law firm. It is important understand the business needs and records management requirements of your organization. Smaller organizations in low-risk (non-litigious) environments may be able to design an ERM system with just a few basic retention categories. However, larger organizations with high risk and in an industry with more litigation and legal requirements will want to look at more robust software with industry regulatory compliance certifications.

The new ERM system will have a big impact on everyone in the organization and it will be worth the time to take a good look at the current Records Management policies and procedures, or lack of them. Additionally, there are many common records and information management polies that are related to ERM, such as email, file naming conventions, version control, file system and network sharing organization just to name a few. Taking the time to read, catalog, and understand how information is used will make it easier to identify gaps and challenges when developing the ERM program.  

Understanding your organization’s internal policies and standards is a good start and the next step is to perform an inventory. An inventory will locate, identify and describe all agency records series, regardless of physical form. The process will describe the general function and overall content of the record types and include physical format, growth rate, location, volumes, frequency of use, and identify duplicate copies. This can be performed with the help of a vendor or consultant to ensure you are getting all the metadata to help build out the ERM system. A data scrubbing project will often be needed after the inventory to eliminate duplication, provide missing metadata, and identify documents that need to be declared as records.

All of these policies, standards, and processes will change from the way you name a word document to where you place the final version. Keep in mind that the ERM system is a function of business process, governance, operational controls, change management and training. We have a saying here –“The technology will always work itself out – it is the people part of ERM systems that is the most difficult.” The ERM program and implementation is a change management project that happens to involve technology. Gathering and reviewing policies and procedures, communicating, locating documents and getting organized before designing the ERM system is critical for success. The first goal is to capture the needs of the organization in a manner which enables a successful program and that can only be accomplished with a good foundation.

Leigh Woody
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.

Project Risk Management

One of the key factors for a successful project is to identify and mitigate risks before they happen. 

I found the following analogy regarding this subject to be both a unique and entertaining example of risk management gone wrong.

Excerpt provided from:  

http://blogs.capella.edu/projectmanagementroundtable

 

Stephen M. Schneider Says:
November 2nd, 2010 at 5:12 am

Valkyrie and Project Risk

The motion picture Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, highlights the importance of Project Management (in general) and Project Risk Management (in particular). The movie examines the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944 by dissonant army officers, an effort that meets all the definitions of a project. Von Stauffenberg, the man charged with actually killing Hitler, smuggled a bomb into a briefing room with Hitler present, and then left.

There were many problems associated with this failed project, including lack of proper requirements. However, risk identification was one of the more glaring deficiencies. If you were von Stauffenberg, what risks would you have considered and what risk responses would you have planned? One of the obvious risks of using explosives in an assassination attempt would have been injury and not death. If this risk happened, what would be the risk response? As a contingency plan, von Stauffenberg could have returned to the briefing room in the confusion after the blast (a natural response that would arouse no suspicion) and finished the job with his sidearm if necessary. If that failed, von Stauffenberg’s assistant could have deployed a hand grenade.

Unfortunately, von Stauffenberg assumed that no risks would be realized and that a contingency plan was not necessary. As soon as the bomb exploded, he left the area, assuming (incorrectly) that Adolf Hitler was dead. In fact, Hitler was only slightly injured. After von Stauffenberg had left the briefing room, someone accidently kicked the briefcase that contained the bomb and then moved it behind a heavy table support, which helped protect Hitler from the blast. As a result, WWII lasted for almost another year. During that period, hundreds of thousands died. In Germany, the Gestapo executed thousands of people suspected of supporting the assassination attempt. A select few were strangled slowly with piano wire – executions Hitler had filmed for his personal entertainment. It was a very high price to pay for poor risk planning. Is it any wonder that project management places so much emphasis on risk?

Robert Hughet

ImageSource, Inc.

Blogs as Serious Tools for Serious Project Managers?

Blogs are more than a medium for marketing, news, and education. From personal experience I can tell you that they also serve as serious tools for serious project managers.

As a professional project manager I’ve worked with companies from Seattle to Sydney. A key factor in making sure that a project goes well is communications. Blogs are excellent mediums for communicating information in a concise manner that gives all team members the ability to participate in the conversation.

Last year my little company of 70 people was acquired by a Fortune 50 company. As the project manager for the integration I relied heavily on our internal blog to communicate information about project status and schedule. It was also incredibly useful in helping train people on new processes associated with our acquisition.

The number one software used for communications in a project isn’t Microsoft Project or some other fancy tool—it’s email. Blogs have a number of advantages over email. Although our users got email notifications about blog updates they didn’t have to store and manage these notifications in their own email client. They could access the blog from their email notice. And if they wanted to go back to the subject they just had to search the blog. No digging through their inbox, deleted items, folders, or even worse—asking ME to send them yet another copy.

To communicate information about our integration we also put out several newsletters. But this format tended to be a big production in contrast to the blog. For each newsletter we had to pull together a number of articles and format them. By the time we got all the content together some of it was already dated. Plus, people tend to shy away from or skim longer items like newsletters. But with a blog we sent out postings as the information was needed. It was timely and digestible.

Although we kept our blog articles short they often linked to more comprehensive information. Users could look at the posting to get the gist of the update. Then they could use links in the blog to access detailed training, schedules, and other updates. The blog was their portal to key information and remained available well into the future.

Another advantage of a blog is that it’s a very interactive tool. When someone discovered something interesting about our new company they could share that information in a posting. Some users discovered “quick tips” about working with new systems that they shared with everyone else. I also encouraged our executives to share good news about the project in blog postings rather than waiting for company events.

If you’re interested in learning more about how blogs, wikis, and social media are useful tools for managers check out my posting on Enterprise 2.0 and the Hostage Dog. That article also links to a recent presentation I gave to the Seattle area chapter of the Project Management Institute.

Dennis Brooke writes about Almost True Stories of Life at www.dennisbrooke.wordpress.com. He’s a manager for a tiny but important division of a Fortune 50 company. On November 4 he’ll be speaking on Enterprise 2.0 and Project Management in Bellevue, WA at the Nexus ECM conference. See www.nexusecm for information.

This posting originally published on Blogging Bistro and is reprinted courtesy of  that site.

  

Sad Day in the World of Project Management

 

It is a sad day in the world of project management. Rita Mulcahy passed away after a long battle with breast cancer.

To those of us who studied for the PMP exam using her exam prep tools and books she will be missed.

 Her contributions to Project Management, and the PM community are and will continue to be  immense.

Al Senzamici, PMP
Program Manager
ImageSource, Inc.