Revenue Department wins UN award - Bangalore, Saturday, June 24th, 2006
The Karnataka revenue department has been selected for the prestigious UN public service awards for good governance and innovative projects in rural and urban areas. The department is among 11 entities from as many countries chosen for this years awards. The awards were announced on the occasion of UN public service day, which was observed on Friday.
Right click to e-asy governance - It takes just two minutes - faster than cooking noodles to get land records in Karnataka. Land records that used to be manually maintained by 9000 village officials and took endless queues and unsavory demands at the sub-registrar's offices is now just a computer print out. That is the path breaking e-governance initiative, Bhoomi.
In the space of six years 40000000 farmers have right clicked to secure land records. They have collectively and ungrudgingly paid Rs. 61000000 /- for the service (45Rs = 1 USD), that has made life much easier for them. A stunning 2000000 land records have been computerised. This is implemented via 203 kiosks across the district.
Bhoomi's advantages are multiple. For farmers, against a delay of about 30 days, they get records in two minutes. To ensure that no one can manipulate records, there is biometric system. The farmer can himself keep track of his files through a touch screen based system. The land records are linked online to banks as well as courts of law.
Honours heaped
- The UN public service award for good governance
- Silver award in commonwealth innovation awards (2002)
- Finalist in Stockholm challenge award (2002)
- Laureate in tech museum awards (2002)
Bhoomi web page : http://www.bhoomi.kar.nic.in
Abrachan
breakpoint # 30
Do's and Don'ts for e-governance projects
Most of the e-governance projects are affected by;
1) Improper conceptualization
2) Lack of stakeholder involvement
3) Vested interests among stakeholders
4) Cutting corners, while under pressure - especially engineering aspects
5) Person dependency
6) Impractical goals
7) Is champion led, rather than process led
8) Focus is only on technology, rather than people & process
9) Infrastructural and financial constraints
Do's
1) Avoid ambitious and large mega projects
2) Big projects to be sub divided into manageable sub projects
3) Project / Program tracking
4) Projectized mode
5) Prototyping and piloting
Abrachan's home page
The art of communication
Every project manager spends around 90% of their time in communicating with others. This include emails, status updates, listening to people, telephone conversations, meetings etc. In project management, it is the senders responsibility to ensure that the recipient received the message and understood it's intended meaning. Hence it becomes an art to communicate effectively, in a very short span of time.
During one of my project management coaching programs, one of the participants quoted this Arabic story. There was a king, who wanted to know how many years he is going to live. So he called an astrologer and sought an answer. The astrologer said 'All your family will die before your death'. The king got angry and killed the astrologer. The king called another astrologer and sought an answer to the same question. The reply was 'You will lead a very long life and will live longer than all other family members'. The king got delighted and rewarded him with lot of gifts. The art of communication !
Abrachan's home page
What is your vocation?
In the midst of all of life's contradictions, we search for life's true meaning. We wonder and ask, Why? Why am I here? Why am I alive at all? What must I do? No one is alone in posing these questions. Humanity as a whole feeds the pressing need to give sense and purpose to a world which is increasingly complicated and difficult to be happy in.
In one of the training programs, we were discussing about the need for a vocation to be conscious about the value of one's own time. Especially in Asia, we do not have many vocations to pursue after the regular working hours, so we are not in a hurry to complete our job ASAP and get out of our offices fast, to pursue our vocations. What is your vocation? . May be this is something we should learn from the west.
"Aby for me usually I use the Critical Chain method and merge all buffers, but I use that buffer at the start for rest"
This a chat line from one my project management training participants. Actually lot of meaning is packed into this single sentence. The moment we know the buffers, we tend to procrastinate work, and in the process the buffer gets wasted. So that is great pitfall, when we start seeing all the buffers as single large chunk as feeder buffers or project buffers. Thanks a ton buddy, for this wonderful joke packed with punch !
Self Organizing teams
Today it was hectic but interesting. The whole day, I was with some brilliant young engineers. At one place we were conducting a work shop on agile project management. I started with the basics which included, self organizing teams. When the workshop really progressed, we split into teams and started work on the architecture. This grouping was a random selection of participants. After some time, the group again merged into one large group, with two persons at the central point. They were really good technically and could contribute the maximum, hence automatically became the epi-center. A true illustration of self organizing teams, which defied the artificial boundaries created around them, to celebrate the ability and power to contribute !
Critical chain project management
It takes a genius to explain complex things in an easy and simple manner. 'Critical Chain' book by Goldratt is a true example. The entire concept of critical chain is explained in the form of a story, which is very easy to understand.. With the understanding of constraints, elevation of constraints, feeder buffer, project buffer, resource buffer and critical chain, a whole new world of opportunity opens up while scheduling projects.
Developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is based on methods and algorithms derived from his theory of constraints. The idea of CCPM was introduced in 1997 in his book, Critical Chain. Application of CCPM has been credited with achieving projects 10% to 50% faster &/or cheaper than the traditional methods (ie. CPM, PERT, Gantt, etc.) developed from 1910 to 1950's. From numerous studies by Standish Group and others for traditional project management methods, only 44% of projects typically finish on time, projects usually complete at 222% of the duration originally planned, 189% of the original budgeted cost, 70% of projects fall short of their planned scope (technical content delivered), and 30% are cancelled before completion. These traditional statistics are mostly avoided through CCPM. Typically, CCPM users report 95% on-time and on-budget completion when CCPM is applied correctly. (from wikipedia)
How PMBOK© help in Product Development Projects?
Project Management Professional certification addresses the general project management concepts, which can be applied for any kind project, irrespective of the domain. It is just a collection of project management good practices, which the practitioners can choose and apply in their projects, based on their project needs.
To understand this, let us try to classify projects based on their exploratory factor. In a standard construction project or for a standard SAP implementation project, the exploratory factor (the R&D nature) of the project can be very low, where as for a new technology product development project; the exploratory factor will be very high. Based on these the project approach / strategy will vary and at the same time, the basic building blocks of project management will remain the same.
For a software project which follows the water fall model, the stages of requirements freezing, design, coding and testing happens sequentially. This is perfect, if the requirements are clear and the project’s exploratory factor is low. For a new product development project, the exploratory factor and the requirements volatility are high; hence a compartmentalized waterfall approach will not work. Then we go for agile project management, where requirements, design, coding and testing phases are repeated in every iteration. That means a project following a waterfall model has just one heavy weight iteration, where as a project which is following agile project management has multiple iterations and the building blocks of both waterfall and agile remains the same (requirements, design, coding, testing, planning, risk management, quality management, human resource management, time management, procurement management, stakeholder management, communications management etc…). This is exactly what the project management body of knowledge covers. It covers the basic building blocks of project management and gives all the freedom under the sun to the project manager to tailor it to the project’s needs.
The following table maps some key aspect of product development projects and the linkage to the project management body of knowledge based on which the Project Management Professional examination is based.
|
The product development aspect |
The PMBOK correlation |
|
Choosing the right projects to execute |
Project selection methods like NPV, IRR, ROI, Cost benefit analysis, Portfolio management |
|
The product sponsor |
Sponsor roles and responsibilities |
|
Product vision |
Project charter |
|
Project strategy |
Project charter |
|
Business case |
Project charter |
|
Project manager roles and responsibilities |
Project charter |
|
Product manager roles and responsibilities |
Not covered explicitly |
|
Organizational structure |
Functional organization, projectized organization, matrix organization |
|
Requirements management |
High level scope definition, detailed scope definition, Brainstorming, Delphi technique, Function analysis , affinity diagrams, product breakdown structures, work breakdown structures, change management |
|
Stakeholder management |
Stakeholder identification, classification, strategies for management |
|
Risk management |
Risk identification, quantitative risk analysis, qualitative risk analysis, decision tree |
|
Communication management |
Communications requirement analysis, channel design, technology priorities, amplification factor |
|
Human resource management |
Team design, selection, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Vrooms theory of motivation |
|
Ethics |
Professional ethics of a project manager |
|
Project planning |
Initial scope, detailed scope, work breakdown structure, AOA diagrams, AON node diagrams, Critical path, Critical chain, Rolling wave planning, resource leveling, scope, schedule, cost baselines |
|
Project tracking |
Earned value management |
|
Project execution |
Fast tracking, Crashing |
|
Stage gates |
Stage gates, Kill points |
|
Product quality |
Implied requirements, Explicit requirements, stakeholder management, and definition of quality, Ishikawa diagram, project metrics, pareto analysis, corrective actions, and preventive actions. |
If we consider the total product development lifecycle comprising of;
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Concept phase
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Prototype
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Development
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Production
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Marketing
The PMBOK addresses mainly the development phase.
As we can see, PMBOK is more descriptive in nature. It is just a collection of project management good practices and it is the discretion of the project manager to decide which ones to use, within his project.
Will Project Management Professional credential help in a product development scenario?
Knowledge of best practices in project management will help any manager in a product development scenario, and Project Management Professional training from a coach with product development background will help in stressing the relevancy of professional project management in product scenario. That will make the difference. Again, there should be management commitment in implementing the concepts learned in the class room.
Abbreviations
PMBOK - Project management body of knowledge
Project Management Professional - Project management professional certification
About the author
Abrachan is a Corporate Consultant, Coach and Practitioner of Software engineering, Project management and Quality management. He has around two decades of experience in software development, quality management and project management. He started his career as a computer programmer and subsequently played the roles of Systems Analyst, Senior consultant, Project manager, Senior project manager, Head – QA, Manager – Process Engineering and Profit center head. He worked for organizations such as HCL, FEC, OTE, Think Business Networks and Novell. At Novell, he did the project management of ‘Pragati’ , a comprehensive tool for software project management, which got accolades at Linux Bangalore, Brain share USA and Brain share Europe. At present he works for Prologic systems (private) limited, as it's Managing Director.
He is the architect of the PMPdistilled premium Project Management Professional preparatory program, which is being delivered in multiple countries successfully. He has successfully conducted several customized project management programs for several leading organizations. He is a member of the OPM3® 2007 Update Project Team, PMI, SPIN and SPI - SIG (software process improvement special interest group). He co-authored and conducted a workshop on iterative software development at the SPM-ICON, 2004 international conference on project management.
He holds a bachelors degree in Electrical engineering from Bangalore University, Diploma in systems management from NIIT, Certification in quality analysis from QAI USA, Project Management Professional (project management professional) certification from Project management institute (Project management institute), USA and is PRINCE2 certified. He is pursuing M.S in quality management with BITS, Pilani.
His current interests include organizational development, agile project management and PMO consulting
Contact details
mobile phone : +91 98451 78851 web page : www.abrachan.org email abrachan@prologic.in
skype : pmpdistilled
breakpoint # 21
Design power
Today while reading the greatness guide by Robin Sharma, in one chapter he was talking about the German excellence in good design and about apple's products. Have you ever come across a successful technical project with a bad design?. Do you recollect the saying 'success or failure of a project is determined at the beginning of the project' and the design happens during the early stages. In technical projects, once you get the architecture and the design right, the ability to respond to changes increases and changes are inevitable in technical projects (the continuous elaboration). So do not be in a hurry to complete the design phase and move on to construction. In APM (agile project management), the architecture evolves during the first few iterations, a very good practice. Have the patience and maturity to spend enough time till you reach the right design, and always the best designs are simple, and can adopt the changes easily.
to see the earlier breakpoints visit www.abrachan.org
Time value of time
The conventional project management teaches us about the time value of money. In a nutshell, it advocates the wisdom of investing money in a project, which will bring in more returns than just investing money in bank (NPV- Net Present Value), and the underlying theme is time value for money. During my client engagements, these days I do not see much shortage of money but can see lot of shortage for TIME!. It is high time, to start doing the cost benefit analysis for every major activity we perform. We can achieve a very high 'time value' by;
1) Asking the following questions, before taking up any activity;
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If I do not do this, what is the impact? Is there anyone else in the organization, who can do this activity?
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Is there anyone else who can do this, at a lesser cost?
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If I delegate this to some one, will it add to his/her experience?
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Is there any other activity I can do, which will bring in more returns?
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If I start this, will I be able to complete it? or will it be a work in progress for ever, due to other priorities?
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What is the probability of success?
2) Map it to Stephen Covey's four quadrants
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Is this urgent and important?
-
Is this urgent and not important?
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Is this not urgent and important?
-
is this not urgent and not important?
These steps will help you invest your time wisely. Remember, it is in short supply ! If you have not read the book 'Seven habits of highly effective people' by Stephen Covey, I strongly recommend it to you.
" Invest your time wisely. Invest only in those areas, which will give you maximum returns. Remember, time is in short supply in the 21st century. Whoever makes the best returns out of it will emerge as the winner. "
web site of abrachan www.abrachan.org
Engineering manager Vs Project Manager
Yesterday I got a friend of mine, who worked with me at Novell. Right now he is with another American product company. He was telling me that 'Aby my heart is in project management and I am an engineering manager now'. Oh dear, that is the best thing that can happen to you, especially when you are with knowledge workers, doing product development. To read the full posting visit my web page
During January 2006, I had the opportunity to train batches of software engineers on project management based on the project management body of knowledge but focused on the practtioners approach, not just the exam perspective. Naturally the discussion got into the application of project management fundamentals within the agile framework. I found this very interesting becuase the latest PMBOK gives handles to these;
1) The current version of PMBOK gives us stuff like rolling wave / moving window planning - similar to the iterative approach of agile
2) There is lot of discussion around the throughput model Vs the cost model, which is the conventional approach. Throughput model is the essence of agile, and is covered in PMBOk through the critical chain approach of Godratt, which is focusing just on the throughput. This gells well with the agile manifesto.
3) Instead of applying the critical path and the earned value for the entire project, the focus should shift to defining the critical path of the current and the next iteration cycles as well as tracking their progress using earned value. In a nutshell, for whatever is definitive, apply the critical path and earned value and track with greater rigor.
These are just thoughts of mine, and I believe in the applicability of this in agile. Invite you to dhare your views on this thought :-)
Some how, there is a general perception that
Project Management Professional credential is very difficult to achieve. Some times some of my students get panicked with this, and they tend to pass this on to others in the batch also. It is some sort of epidemic among the aspirants. The panic trigger (the one who brings and spreads panic within the group) comes into the training program with the whole list of books available on project management /
Project Management Professional preparation. Some times even carry one into the class. Talks authoritatively about the experience of others and sometimes is very close minded. He or she tend to think that, whatever they practise within their organization is the correct procedure and there cannot be anything better than that. This person goes to the extent of bringing in thousands of questions (of course pirated, and irrelevant) and starts distributing to the class members. The net effect, absolute panic in the class, and those weak in their heart and not so experienced falls prey to this. very often, the panick trigger, fares bad in the exam, where as some quiet guy, sitting in that corner of the class comes out with flying colors, in the final exam.
Very often, the training organizations also hypes it up, projecting how difficult it is to clear the
Project Management Professional credential examination, with a view to charge exhorbitant fees from the participants.
Is it that difficult?
My answer is 'NO'. One can make it difficult but actually it is not at all, as difficult as your graduation examination. Ant graduate with 4 years in the industry can achieve this credential with the right kind of preparation. The key is focus and the right selection of course material and training. There is no point in going after everything available under the sun, about project management. About 70 to 80 hours of preparation, with the right kind of mentoring and material will make it easy. The challenge is in making it easier, and it is easy to make it complex.
So dont worry. You can do it with ease and confidence, if your method, material and mentor are the right ones. After all, you manage projects and the essence of project management is in not allowing the projects to manage you.
Let us understand this.
'Benefits of having Project Management Professional Credential' a scenario based hypothesis
The scenarios are worked out with the following assumptions;
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The PM is handling a project of this nature(size, complexity, distribution) for the first time
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The project is critical
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No special training on professional project management is provided to the project manager
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The organization do not have documented project guidelines for the project manager to refer to
Scenario 1 – project initiation
You are selected as the project manager for a prestigious project. It is your dream job, and you have never handled a project of this size and nature. You are chosen to manage this project, because you have a successful track record as a project manager , which were smaller than this and the management believes that you can handle this. You want to be successful at any cost and at the same time, do not know where to start, due to the geographical spread of the team and the large number of project stakeholders, it seems very complex. There are multiple ways to execute the same project. Which one to choose? Whom all should I consult? What should be the team hierarchy? These kind of questions plagues you and you are not confident?
If you are a non Project Management Professional , the chances for failure in the initial phases itself is very high. If the organization do not have a documented process / guideline for managing such projects do not exist (and that is the case, when the projects are first of it's kind in the organization), you will be in a most un-enviable position. The chances of you projecting yourself as in adequate or in experienced is very high. Can you afford to take such a big risk?. Once the credibility is lost at this stage, it is very difficult to recover. Project Management Professional credential will give you enough knowledge on the tasks (best practices from industry), to be performed during the project starting (project initiation) and they are;
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Conduct Project Selection Methods
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Define Scope
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Document Project Risks, Assumptions, and Constraints
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Identify and Perform Stakeholder Analysis
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Develop Project Charter
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Obtain Project Charter Approval
Scenario-2 - project planning
You are planning for the project. You came out with a good schedule which is done to the best of your ability. With this schedule you go to meet the project sponsor. During the discussion the project sponsor asked for details such as;
-
What are the major tasks on the critical path?
-
What are the major risks and how you are going to manage them?
-
What is the planned tracking mechanism of cost, scope, schedule?
-
What are the billing milestones
-
Month wise resource requirement
All you have is a schedule. You feel miserable.
A Project Management Professional is equipped with enough knowledge to get these right and knows upfront that the following tasks are required to be performed during the project planning stage.
Planning the Project
Tasks
-
Define and Record Requirements, Constraints and Assumptions
-
Identify Project Team and Define Roles and Responsibilities
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Create the WBS
-
Develop Change Management Plan
-
Identify Risks and Define Risk Strategies
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Obtain Plan Approval
-
Conduct Kick-off Meeting
this not only helps to do the project plans professionally but provides enough knowledge to provide guidance and suggestions to senior management on critical project planning aspects.
Scenario – 3 – project execution
You are in thick of project execution. In one of the team meetings you realized that, the team is doing certain activities, which are not in the project schedule and at the same time some other critical activities are not performed. When you asked them, why this is so? the answer was ' the divisional manager asked for it'. Divisional manager is your boss's boss. You did not know how to handle the situation. This really upsets you. How to tackle this scenario? Ultimately towards the end of the project, all the stakeholders of the project should be happy. How to achieve this?
The pressure mounts on you. As a project manager, you are accountable and if you do not have control over the project activities, how are you going to achieve it..... You already started feeling that, this project is going to be a failure..........
If you are not a Project Management Professional , its quite likely that, you will end up straining your relationship with your own team. But a trained project manager will know exactly what need to be done. Project Management Professional credential Armour you with knowledge on;
Executing the Project
-
Execute Tasks Defined in Project Plan
-
Ensure Common Understanding and Set Expectations
-
Implement the Procurement of Project Resources
-
Manage Resource Allocation
-
Implement Quality Management Plan
-
Implement Approved Changes
-
Implement Approved Actions and Workarounds
-
Improve Team Performance
Scenario-4 – monitoring and control
Of late you and the team started to think that the project review meetings are a waste of time. Very often it turns out to be a stock taking meeting, with a very ad hoc focus on the issues and concerns. The decisions are very short sighted. If you had the foresight and knowledge about what is required you would have planned for it and unfortunately that is not the case. Due to all these, you are not very confident on the current project status, the real issues and concerns and whether the speed of execution is sufficient to meet the deadline. Everybody is busy executing the project and work very hard, but you, the project manager is under tremendous pressure and is not very sure......
If you are a Project Management Professional , you will have sufficient knowledge on
Monitoring and Controlling
-
Measure Project Performance
-
Verify and Manage Changes to the Project
-
Ensure Project Deliverables Conform to Quality Standards
-
Monitor all Risks
This knowledge will help you do your job better.
Scenario – 5 - Project close out
The delivered the product of the project. Customer is happy and has given the acceptance letter. The team celebrates. Every body thinks that the project is over. After five days, the project sponsor forwards you a supplier complaint regarding the delay in his final payment. The sponsor is very upset about it, because this incident is going to hit the supplier satisfaction score negatively. You have put in all the hard work to make the delivery on time, the team and the customer is happy....but at the last moment, to your utmost surprise this happens. You feel terrible.....
If you are a Project Management Professional , you will be aware that, during the project closing phase, you need to take care of;
Closing the Project
-
Obtain Final Acceptance for the Project
-
Obtain Financial, Legal, and Administrative Closure
-
Release Project Resources
-
Identify, Document and Communicate Lessons Learned
-
Create and Distribute Final Project Report
-
Archive and Retain Project Records
-
Measure Customer Satisfaction
and this knowledge will help you to be more proactive, which is the essence of successful project management.
Scenario – 5 - professional responsibility
Your company is subcontracting a part of the work, related to your project. One of the potential sub contractors is your friend's friend. One day, he calls you for a party and offers you a small packet containing a gift. Your company policies do not allow you to take any gift of value more than $100, from the subcontractors of the company. In this case, he is only a potential sub contractor and the value of the gift is not known, at the time of receipt of the gift. You are in a dilemma. What is the right action?
A Project Management Professional will definitely know, how to handle such situations professionally and ethically. The Project Management Professional examination focuses on the professional responsibility of project managers.
These are the reasons why Project Management Professional credential is widely acclaimed world wide. Project management is becoming more and more complex due to;
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Distributed developmental work
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Cultural issues
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Time zone issues
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Legal issues
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Copy rights
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Environmental issues
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Pressure to reduce cycle time
All these calls for expert project managers. A search in http://www.monster.com gives me more than 150 opportunities for project managers, where Project Management Professional credential is specifically mentioned as a criteria for selection. You are better with Project Management Professional , than without it.
About the author of this article
Abrachan is a coach, practitioner and student of software engineering, project management and quality management.He has around two decades of experience in software development, quality management and project management. He started his career as a computer programmer and subsequently played the roles of systems analyst, senior consultant, project manager, senior project manager, head – QA, manager – Process Engineering and profit center head. He worked for organizations such as HCL, FEC Singapore, OTE Muscat, Think Business Networks, Novell. At Novell, he spear headed Pragati, project management tool under GPL. At present he works for his own company Prologic Systems (p) Limited , which he founded. At prologic, he architected the PMPdistilled three phase Project Management Professional preparatory program.
More information at www.abrachan.org
He can be contacted by email: Abrachan's home page (at) gmail (dot) com
This is a very comon question asked by many PM aspirants. Techies want to become project managers fast, mostly becuase that is the only career path defined for them in most organizations. If some one asked me, about some thing I miss in my professional life very badly is 'technical skills'. When I was in my early thirties, I was doing very well technically and suddenly in one of the performance appraisals this question was asked to me by my then boss ' Do you want to tread the managerial path or the technical path? '. I was very much quick in choosing the managerial path. I dont regret it and at the same time, I wish I were more technical now (after 15 years of making that vital choice). Still, I am technical enough to design a data base....
Even now, that is even after 15 years of my decision to me managerial, I still see many techies, taking that hypocritical decision of moving into managerial line (I say it as hypocritical, becuase they are not doing justice to their heart's call, they are doing it to get the power or the fringe benefits associated with the mangerial position) at the cost of a great technical genious.
Recently I had a chat with a guy who is technically brilliant, but made the call to become a PM and lost both. I was continuously cautioning him about his decision, and he was his argumant was that ' he wants the title of a manager first and then decide whether it is technical or managerial' and towards the end he missed both.
What is the message?
In the present day scenario, to manage high tech projects, one need to be technical. I will rather say techno managerial.
All managerial positions in the software industry do not call for the same degree of techno awareness. It goes like this.
Director - development - techno - strategic - should be able to view the building blocks of the techno strategy
Project manager - Project management - high , technical medium
Product manager - project management - medium , technical - high
Engineering manager / development manager - project management - high , technology high
As we can see, there are different management positions in the software engineering projects, and the need for technology awareness vary from role to role...
If you are technologically good, build the PM capabilities.....and if you are good in PM, improve technology skills, if you are good in both, improve them further......
Both are mutually complementing. It is not one at the cost of the other. To be successful one need both
As per PMBOK - the project manager should have enough technical knowledge to guide the proceedings of the projects, as well as participate meaningfully in the project discussons.