A Collection of Materials Used to Increase the Probability of Project Success

A Collection of Materials Used to Increase the Probability of Project Success

Even experienced project managers are not immune to common reasons for project failure. Poor time and budget performance, failure to deal with complexity, and uncontrolled changes in scope can catch any project manager off guard.

Here's a collection of conference presentations, white papers, book chapters, and journal articles on topics developed over four decades of managing projects and programs in various domains. Arriving on or before the needed time, at or below the needed cost, with the needed Capabilities to accomplish a mission or fulfill a strategy is necessary for the project's success.

Five Immutable Principles of Project Success, no Matter the Domain, Context, Management Tools, or Processes

The basis of success for all project success, no matter the domain, project management process (Agile or Traditional), project management tools, and technology, starts by answering the questions posed by the Five Immutable Principles, first published in Performance-Based Project Management , American Management Association, February 2014.

  1. What does Done look like in units of measure meaning full to the decision-makers, starting with Measures of Effectiveness (MOE), Measures of Performance (MOP), Technical Performance Measures (TPM), and Key Performance Parameters (KPP)?
  2. What is the Plan to reach Done, with outcomes fulfilling these measures on the needed date, for the needed cost, to deliver the needed Capabilities to accomplish a mission or fulfill a strategy?
  3. What Resources - staff, facilities, funding, and regulatory compliance will be needed to reach Done as needed?
  4. What are the Impediments to reaching done at the needed time for the cost with the needed capabilities?
  5. How will Progress to Plan be measured in units of measure meaningful to the decision-makers? The passage of time, consumption of money, production of Stories, and Story points are not measures of progress to Plan. Delivery of Capabilities to accomplish the mission are.

Increasing Probability of Success for Software Intensive Complex System of Systems using Agile Development and Earned Value Management

Complex Systems Development, including Software Development Lifecycles, is straightforward when there is a Bright Line between the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) and system development processes that define the Capabilities needed to accomplish a mission or fulfill a strategy using Measures of Effectiveness, Measures of Performance, Technical Performance Measures, Key Performance Parameters, all used to inform Physical Percent compared to the Planned Percent Complete - all with Risk-Informed decision making.

Increasing the Probability of Success for Complex System of Systems by Integrating Systems Engineering and Agile Project Management with Program Performance Management

Starting with Government—and industry-compliant processes and system development, including the SW Development Lifecycle (agile), is straightforward. The following 20 sections are individual content of the integrated materials in the next section.

  1. Executive Overview ?- Systems Engineering, Earned Value Management, and Traditional and Agile development have much in common.
  2. First Comes Earned Value Management ?- EVM and Agile must be deployed together to harmonize.
  3. Opening Background ?- both EVM and Agile measure progress to plan as Physical Percent Complete
  4. Start with the End in Mind ?- the integrated value proposition of Agile and EVM needs to be articulated upfront.
  5. Framing Assumptions ?- define and track key program assumptions made early in the program development.
  6. Foundations of Earned Value Management ?- physical percent complete is the foundation of EVM + Agile.
  7. Performance Planning ?- is performed by objectively assessing accomplishment at the work performance level.
  8. Connecting the Dots Between EVM and Agile ?- sharing a common theme of Progress to Plan measured by Physical Percent Complete
  9. Requirements Elicitation ?- technical and operational requirements flow down in traditional programs and emerge from Capabilities in Agile programs.
  10. Planning, Budgeting, and Estimating in Agile ?- using Cardinal Values to estimate work on Agile projects.
  11. Step by Step PMB - building and executing the Performance Measurement Baseline.
  12. Dependency Management in Agile at Scale ?- with multiple agile teams working System of Systems, dependencies will appear.
  13. Change Control ?- differences between change control on traditional and agile projects.
  14. Physically Connecting the Dots ?- between Agile, Program Planning and Control, Earned Value Management and Reporting.
  15. The Dark Side of Agile ?- both EVM and Agile have dark sides.
  16. Failure Modes of Agile Transformation and Program Performance Management ?- finding and handling the root causes of failure.
  17. Maturity Models for Deploying Agile at Scale ?- applying EVM through the CMMI governance framework.
  18. Root Cause Analysis - Identify conditions and actions creating root causes of project failure to develop corrective and preventive actions.
  19. Agile Contracts ?- FAR 15.201 and Agile Uniform Contract Formats, agile construction contracts, and other non-IT domainsConclusion ?- integration of agile on EVM programs is straightforward.
  20. Conclusion - Integrating Agile on EVM programs is straightforward once the bright line is established between the PMB and Agile release Sprint and Story activities.

All this individual content (Charts 1 to 20) is in a single file ...

Essential Views

The 24 Views of a Project's Performance are the minimum set needed for Program or Project Management to effectively oversee the successful delivery of the project's capabilities on time and on budget.

The Essential Views are the leading and lagging indicators of project success. The data sources for these views start with project management data, including the Risk Register, Technical Performance Measures, Measures of Effectiveness, Measures of Performance, and Key Performance Parameters. Putting all these together in a set of views for use by management and stakeholders is the primary benefit of this approach. This section starts with two briefings, followed by a Workshop developed at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA)

Essential Views Workshop Prepared for IDA

Here are the contents of a multi-day workshop for applying the Essential Views needed to increase the probability of program success prepared for the Institute for Defense Analyses

Managing the Development of Complex System of Systems with Traditional and Agile Methods

[Solutions] should always concentrate on the whole and not on assembling parts. All the great principles have one thing in common. They are simple. After one realizes such a simple but profound principle, one can not stop wondering how one survived without its knowledge. — Christopher Alexander (The Timeless Way of Building, Oxford University Press, 1979)

The Immutable Principles of Project Success

Root Cause Analysis

Without finding the Root Cause of any dysfunction, the conditions and actions that created that cause, and defining the corrective and preventive actions to remove, protect, or isolate the system from those causes, no suggested method to avoid problems or fix problems after they appear can be credible.

Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management is an iterative approach to planning and guiding project processes that breaks the work activities down into smaller cycles (sprints or iterations). Just as in Agile software development, an Agile project in any domain is completed in small sections, with the results of those outcomes informing the plans for the next iteration.

Estimating Agile Software and Traditional Projects

Estimating is a critical part of project planning and controls. It involves Quantitative processes to estimate cost, resources, duration, and technical performance.

Establishing the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB)

The Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) is an important tool in earned value management used by Program Managers and Systems Engineers in the Technical Assessment Process to appraise a program’s technical progress.

Managing Embedded Systems and Systems Architecture

Managing Software Intensive System and Systems (SISOS)

Planning and Scheduling

Getting to Done

Project and Program Management Symposium, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

Deliverables-Based Planning (DBP)

Governance

  • Principles of Program Governance - governance of enterprise programs focuses on delivering products or services to support top-line growth with moving operational savings to the bottom line
  • Program Governance Road Map - Program Governance Road map for product development, deployment, and sustainment of products and services in compliance with CMS guidance, ITIL IT management, CMMI best practices, and other guidance to assure high-quality software is deployed for sustained operational success in mission-critical domains.
  • Principles of IT Governance ?- governance of Enterprise IT focuses on the Delivery of Services to Support Top Line Growth.
  • Project Governance - Project Management is a well-defined concept found in many guidebooks and Bodies of Knowledge. Putting these guides and BOKs to work for the benefit of the enterprise is the role of Project Governance.

Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB)

Management of Change

Case Studies

Risk Management (RM)

Risk Management is essential for the success of any significant project. All project risk comes from uncertainty. Project uncertainty comes in two forms: Epistemic uncertainty which is the lack of knowledge, Epistemology is the study of knowledge. This uncertainty can be handled by buying knowledge to reduce the risk. And Aleatory uncertainty, which is a random process. On projects, Aleatory uncertainty is handled by the Cost, Schedule, and Technical Performance margin.

Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS)

Building, deploying, and executing an IMP / IMS requires change in the conventional paradigm of project planning and controls and the management processes. This change starts by measuring progress as the completion of Accomplishment Criteria (AC) and the fulfillment of Significant Accomplishments (SA). This progress is described through the assessment of physical percent complete rather than measuring progress through the passage of time and consumption of resources.

Earned Value Management World Presentations

Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner. EVM has the ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a single integrated system. It’s notable for its ability to provide accurate forecasts of project performance problems. - ACQNotes, Program Management Tool for Aerospace

EVM World 2009

EVM World College of Performance Management 2010 - Naples, Florida.

EVM World 2011

EVM World 2014 - Alexandria, VA

EVM World 2013

EVM World 2015 - New Orleans, LA

EVM World 2016 - Naples, Florida

EVM World 2017 - New Orleans, LA

EVM World 2019 - Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Other Earned Value Management Resources

Earned Value Management and Agile

Technical Performance Management (TPM)

Building the Perfect Schedule

Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

The pursuit of operational effectiveness is seductive because it is concrete and actionable. Caught up in the race for operational effectiveness, many managers do not understand the need for a strategy - Dr. Micheal E. Porter - Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.

Project Strategy

Project Strategy is an overachieving set of guidelines to be used by the project in making decisions and taking action in alignment with corporate, business,

Capabilities-Based Planning (CBP)

Electronic Document Management Systems

CMMI + Agile + Program Management

White Papers, Essays, and Journal Papers

These White Papers cover a wide range of topics while I was and still am engaged in delivering outcomes. Ranging from software development, software and systems management, management of the project in several different domains, electronics document management, risk management, work breakdown structures, and science and math topics applied to solving complex problems.

Software Technology

Project Management

Electronic Document Management

Earned Value Management

Risk Management

Programmatic Risk Management in PM Weekly

Work Breakdown Structure

Essays on Science, Math, and Project Management

Science and Math

Software Development

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