Five Immutable Principles of Project Success no Matter the Domain, Context, Management Tools, or Processes (Part 2)

Over the next 5 days, here is a collection of materials I've developed and applied over my years as a program performance management consultant.

Here's Part 1

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. This collection of materials can help improve your project’s success rate.

Here's a collection of conference presentations, white papers, book chapters, and journal articles on topics developed over 4 decades of managing projects and programs in a variety of domains, where 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 success of the project.

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.

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.

• Failure is Trying to Tell Us Something - Root Cause Analysis is a method of problem-solving that identifies the sources of failure or problems.
• Getting It Right - Root Cause Analysis shows failure begins with the buyer not knowing what done looks like.

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.

• Agiley Managing Requirements - a simple guide to requirements management in an agile organization
• Scrum Master Processes - 41 Tasks of the Scrum Master
• Integration of Program Performance Management with Agile Software Development - Starting with the Engineering Estimate, define the deliverables, the plan for their production, their deployment, any variance of effort and cost, and the corrective actions to keep the planned work on plan. These are activities for Program Controls of Scrum development projects based on Product Roadmaps, Release Plans, and measures of Physical Percent Complete at the Sprint level
• Estimating and Managing Agile Projects at DHS - Thomas J. Coonce and Glen B. Alleman, DHS Cost Analysis Stakeholder Working Group
• Software for Our Minds - Patterns and Anti-Patterns for creating and maintaining a shared vision.
• Post-Normal Science and eXtreme Programming - How can we come to understand the impacts of eXtreme Programming and other Agile methods in the absence of scientific data?
• WSRI Agile Program Management Process - Applying agile principles, practices, and processes to the project, building the release plan for each program event in the Integrated Master Plan and deliverables for that review.
• Paradigm of Agile Project Management - when we say Agile in the absence of a Domain and Context, how can it have any meaning?
• Effective Use of Kanban in a Nutshell - Principles, Practices, and Processes of Kanban That Increase the Probability of Project Success
• Lightweight Processes - An Overview of Lightweight Development Processes and Selecting One For Your Projects - Lightweight processes are beginning to replace more formal methods.
• Agile Project Management and "Normative" Paradigms
• Agile Project Management Methods Meet Earned Value - Glen Alleman and Michael Henderson, Agile Development June 25-28, 2003, Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) provide valuable information for planning and controlling complex software development projects in high ceremony environments.
• Agile IT Project Management Methods , Glen B. Alleman, Chapter X in The Story of Managing Projects: A Global, Cross-Disciplinary Collection of Perspectives, DR. E. G. Carayannis and DR. Y. H. Kwak, Greenwood Process 2002
• A Workshop for Product Owners, Scrum Master, and Team Members for Improving Team Performance
• Agile Program Management - Moving from Principles to Practice - Solutions should always concentrate on the whole and not on assembling parts - Christopher Alexander, 1979
• Agile Software Development for Government Software Intensive Systems of Systems (SiS) , - If we're looking to increase the probability of success for Software Intensive System of Systems, look to where that effort can produce the highest return for the investment, Boulder Agile Meetup, 27 July 2016.
• Increasing Probability of Success for Complex System of Systems by Integration Systems Engineering, Agile Project Management with Program Performance Management? - Managing Complex System of Systems Subject to FAR 34.2 and DFARS 234.2 by Applying Agile at Scale
• Product & Process Development Kaizen for Software Development, Project, and Program Management , LPPDR, Denver Colorado, April 21-23, 2008
• When is Light Right? , XP Denver, Aprile 23rd, 2001
• Making Agile Development Work in a Government Contracting Environment - Glen Alleman, Michael Henderson, CH2M Hill, and Ray Seggelke, Envision Technology, Agile Development, June 25-28, Salt Lake City, Utah
• Setting up the Agile Program for EVM Compliant Validation, using the Principles of Agile Systems Engineering , EVM World 2016.
• You Don't Need Agile to Avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of Project Management - Bad Project Management is Just That Bad Project Management.
• Agile Program Management: Moving from Principles to Practice
• Blending Agile Development Methods with CMMI?
• CMMI and Agile, Joining Principles with Practice to Produce a Single Integrated System , PMI Professional Development Day, Grapevine, TX, June 23, 2011.

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.

• From Product Roadmap of Needed Capabilities to Release Plan, to Feature Breakdown Structure, to Credible Estimates , DHS Cost Analysis Stakeholder Working Group, Thomas J. Coonce and Glen B. Alleman
• ?Building a Risk-Adjusted Engineering Estimate and Executing the Risk-Adjusted Product Roadmap , the Risk-Adjusted Product Roadmap starts with Risk-Adjusted Engineering Estimates and the Resulting Rough Order of Magnitude Estimate
• How Should We Estimate Agile Projects and Measure Progress to Plan , Thomas J. Coonce, and Glen B. Alleman, Naval Center for Cost Analysis, Software and IT Cost Analysis Solutions, August 22, 2017
• Options-Based Agile Decision Processes - How to Apply "Real Options" Theory to the Development of ERP ?- Agile Universe, 2002, Chicago Il, August 4 - 7, 2002.
• Calculating Physical Percent Complete for the PMB Using an Agile Tool , EVM Work 2017
• Basis of Estimate Training - Developing a Basis of Estimate is an Art and a Science
• Establishing the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) , 5th Annual College of Scheduling, Chicago, May 4-7, 2008.
• Basis of Estimate Training - Developing a Basis of Estimate is an Art and a Science
• Paired Comparison Analysis - in paired comparison experiments, the worth or merit of a unit is measured through comparisons against other units.