Navigating the Way Home

I came across a nice blog post about the navigation powers of birds.?

This bird was taken from Wale's to Venice, Italy, and released. It found its way home in 14 days, 930 miles over mountains.

Birds must carry a figurative map and compass in their brains to find their way home from an unfamiliar place.

The map tells them where they are, and the compass tells them which direction to fly, even when they are released with no frame of reference to their home loft.

Projects Are Not Birds

As project managers, what's our map and compass? How can we navigate from the start of the project to the end, even though we haven't been on this path before??

How can we find our way Home?

We have a map. It starts with a Capabilities Based Plan (CBP). The capabilities are needed to accomplish the Mission or fulfill the strategy. The CBP states what?Done looks like in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers. These units of measure are?Measures of Effectiveness and?Measures of Performance.

• Measures of Effectiveness - are operational measures of success that are closely related to the achievements of the mission or operational objectives evaluated in the operational environment, under a specific set of conditions.
• Measures of Performance -?characterize physical or functional attributes relating to the system operation, measured or estimated under specific conditions.

These measures speak to our?home and its attributes. The?map?that gets us home is the?Integrated Master Plan. This shows the increasing maturity of the deliverables that implement the Measures of Performance and those Performance items that enable the project to produce the needed capabilities to effectively accomplish the mission or fulfill the business need.?

This looks like a?map?for the increasing value delivery for an insurance company. The map shows the path or actual paths to?home. Home is the ability to generate value from exchanging money to develop software.

Here is some more guidance on applying Capabilities-Based Planning.

• Capabilities-based planning and Balanced Scorecard process improvement and program management methods provide a clear and concise definition of Done.
• Capabilities-Based Planning - defining what Done looks like for needed Capabilities, through Accomplishments and their Criteria in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers starts with a Plan.
• Capabilities-Based Planning for Enterprise Projects
• How to Build a Credible Concept of Operations and Use It to Derive Capabilities and Features

With the Capabilities Defined, the next step is to build the Integrated Master Plan describing the increased maturity of these Capabilities.

• A Gentle Introduction to Integrated Master Planning
• Integrated Master Plan Integrated Master Schele in a Nutshell
• The Five + One Easy Steps to an Integrated Master Plan and Integrated Master Schedule
• Integrated Master Plan - The Foundation for Program Success