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Bigfoot Project Process
- 1. Big Foot Project Process Date 06/02/2006 Mike Rosenberg
- 2. Big Foot Project Reporting and Representation
Editor's Notes
- “ I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the overall process used for the Bigfoot project today. I plan on covering 6 areas of discussion those are the project reporting responsibilities and the project team structure, the process used for this project, some of the areas that I feel were successful, some areas that we can improve on, the lessons learned to this point and finally some recommendations for future projects with R&CW.” Are there any initial questions? (pause) Next slide Big foot project reporting and representation
- “ This chart represents the project reporting responsibilities as well the representation. As you can see we structured the team so that there was at least one Subject Matter Expert per function and as well the steering committee and of course someone to mange the project.” “ From a reporting standpoint there four basic communication points, those are the GDP reviews, where as you know the status is reporting to you (Gretchen) and other executives, Bob our Executive sponsor and Ken our Project sponsor are responsible for that reporting level.” “ On a weekly bases we hold two meeting those our are normal status meetings which are held every Friday, a major portion of those meetings are for the Key Deliverables leaders to discuss the key points for their respective areas. These meetings while optional for our steering committee members, a majority of them have attended each meeting. The other weekly meeting, which is held every Tuesday is the Issues / Risk team meeting, this meeting is attendant by those area we deemed most critical to the success of the project. In other words a risk or issue not discussed or undocumented in these functions could cause a major delay in our plans. In these meeting we review the issues log and discuss status on these issues and determine any new issues. If additional team members or other project resources are needed we invite them to the next session.” “ Finally the last of the reposting resposnlivbites falls into the hand of the project sponsor and me, which is to escalate any issues that may require full committee approval. Fortunately we have not encounter any need for this process, up to this point” Move on to next slide - Overview of project process
- “ When asked to develop the project process I focused in on the process structure I was most familiar with and that was the PMBOK or body of Knowledge developed by the PMI. At a high-level this process includes five process groups, nine knowledge areas, such items as project integration, project scope, project time, cost as an example, imbedded with in those knowledge areas of 39 processes, that are integrated along the process groups. I only plan on discussing the groups that we used today. It should be noted that this is based on PMBOK 2000 and new PMBOK was just introduced last year, which I am currently in the process of study.” Discuss the five major – as shown on the slide “ I don’t plan on discussing the closing phase in detail, since we are not there yet. Some key areas to keep in mind for that process are conducting and documenting a lesson learned session, and archiving all of project records.” Mention last bullet point and move on to next slide.
- “ The first of the five process is the initiation process, a number of these activities were completed prior to my coming on board. The primary budget was already set, and the goal was clearly defined. The project team, as is today, really started out the next process, the planning process where we further expanded on scope statement to include all activities and deliverables.” “ Prior to the start of the planning process I met with the steering committee to discuss the approach I planned on taking to mange this project and gain committee approval before move forward. With the committees approval we moved on to the next process, which was the planning process’ Before the sessions I asked the team to begin think about activities that would be needed to complete this project as well as associated risks and trigger points for those risk. I also asked the steering committee to be able to discuss any constraints or assumptions with the team during the kick off meeting. (If asked identify these are part of the initiation phase. “ At the very begin of this process we conducted kick off meeting, which was a two day session to develop the initial WBS – Work break down structure that detailed the activities needed to complete the project, as well as to discuss the feasibility and impact to shorten the schedule from 2 to 1 year. This could not have been determined without a detail analysis of the effort. The basic steps we took during this meeting were ,the team was broken into groups and provided with note cards, they were asked to develop a card for all of the tasks needed to complete the project. Initially not to be concerned with any sequence or dependencies. It was on the second day after each team reviewed the completed cards that we begin to sequence the events and link functional and nonfunctional dependencies. Also develop initial durations.” “ Upon completion of these session, I took the cards and developed the master plan. That plan was then used for the one on one sessions to finalized and verify verify durations, activities and set start dates. After this a final review was held with the project team” “ I should mention that the initial plan was set up and developed by functions, during the final review with the team and steering committees it was felt that for reporting purposes a better structure was needed that all of the reporting functions that lead us to the high level deliverables that are currently used in the GDP reporting. (finally champions were assigned to each)” Next Slide – Overview continued Execution and control
- ‘ At this point we are working within these two processes, while the resources were identified during the planning process here we worked with the core team members to secure a commitment from them as well as any resources they may need. This is part of the execution phase since this is an ongoing process, as more resources are identified and activities assigned it is important that they understand the deadlines and the priorities associated with this project” “ Within the Communication plan activities, I already discussed the GDP reporting responsibilities and the status reporting which is mostly done within the confines of the weekly status meetings. And monthly meetings are held with M&M associates to discuss the status of the project and via the % complete spreadsheet, also though the use of PMIS, in project link. “ Three of the major activates in managing the project revolving around the continues review of the master plan to ensure on time activities EVA %, and so on. This is accomplished by tracking the activities via the use of an excel spreadsheet that includes - Task in process These are the activities that are in process and should be used to update percent completes, Tasks Beginning in Upcoming Week for any activities that should be starting in the upcoming week.– Late where you should place any late tasks” “ And finally weekly status meeting are where each of the task champions discuss key points for their area of responsibility, after which I review the upcoming tasks and we discuss any late tasks and they impact they may have on any critical activities.” “ A major part of the project control process is the management of our issues and risks, initially during the plan sessions I asked the team members to think of the potential risks associated with this project and identify the trigger points for these risk, as well as possible contingencies, this activity lead us to our current issues log and the Issues and Risk Management team meetings I referred to on the reporting and representation chart” “ While we haven’t had any changes to the scope of this project changes to items such as durations or tasks are reviewed to determine impact to plan.” “ Finally monitoring Plan activity goes hand in hand with managing the progress.” “ one last point before I move on, I think it’s important that it is understood, that all of these activities and process are not discrete onetime events they are overlapping activities that occur at varying levels. Next Slide – What went right
- 2a – “It goes without saying that no matter how well the process is defined or how detailed the plan, it would not be successful without a strong project team.” 2b – “As mentioned in the reporting responsibilities, this is a important part of this or any project, and has helped us to stay on track, by having open discussions on tasks, next up tasks and late activities and the impact of these items, to the critical tasks.’ 2c – “These meetings are another major success factor, it is these type of items, the issues and risks that if not discussed and planned for will definitely impact the project. By getting these items on the table each week, documenting them and developing plans to resolve them, we have stayed focused on these issues as the relate to the plan” 2d “As part of my initial meeting with the steering committee, I discussed the roles of the team members, including project sponsor, project manager and the subject matter expects. I further reviewed this with the team during the kick off, so that everyone had clear understanding of their position. During the kickoff meeting we also began the development of a RAM- Responsibilities assignment matrix. This second document was never fully developed, since the roles for this process were clear cut based on functions with the initial WBS. Although after we restructured the plan to the current set of main tasks, it may have helped to further develop it. I would recommend the development of this document if the project structured is not clear cut.” 2e – “The steering committee have provided valuable input and attend a large % of the status meetings, as well as key members in the issues meeting. They as helped to determine the formation of the high level deliverables used for reporting today. This type of involvement shows the team that the success of this project is not just lip service.” 2f- This helped me to be able get a better focus on the tasks associated with each of the SME’s and further buy in from them, since they were a major influence in how long each of these activities should take. 2g – “The resources on the team understood their areas of responsibility, and with the confidentiality of this project, did a good upfront job of developing the tasks needed to complete this project.” Next Slide – Areas for Improvement (what went wrong)
- 3a –” It was hard to baseline the project since we had multiple iterations of project initially, especially in duration of tasks and as well some missed activities. I would say that some of this had to do with the limited knowledge of the SME, why I did mentioned in the previous slide that they did a good job of developing activities, without all the necessary players there were missed items. Also for many of us this was the first time on this type of project and for many, I believe, a first time in a more structured project environment. So without a solid baseline EVA calculations can not be performed. We also needed to incorporate project budget ( resource costs – person and materials 3b –”During this project we used a strict % complete measurement for tasks activities, while the is a commonly used EV measurement it is the least precise. It leads tasks stay stuck at certain level of completion for a large amount of time, especially when we get into the 80% or higher time frame. One suggestion maybe to use is a % complete = milestones” 3C – “As far as the right resources, we’ve covered that already” 3D – “Summary level reporting was a struggle for me, being so involved in the details I was asked by Bob to develop something that was meaningful to him at high level. I want to thank Ken for developing the a single slide of the critical tasks, which he uses for GDP reporting. and he and I would discuss status on these prior to reporting. This worked well 3E–”As I discussed in the Task tracking process we are using the excel spreadsheet to tracking task activity, while this works it is time consuming, when needed to transfer this work to the project plan” Be prepared to discuss why we aren’t using Microsoft Next Slide – lessons learned
- 4.A– “As I mentioned on the previous slide, in order to baseline the projects and determine the critical path we need to have the tasks and durations set, as much as is possible, upfront. I also believe in the future we should use more of PERT method, (if asked Program Evaluation and Review technique) to estimate the project durations. By using a weighted average of optimistic, pessimistic and most likely estimates. (If asked the calculation is (p+ml+(o+p+(4xml)) / 6) . I also believe that by accomplishing the next three bullet points, we can do better in this areas as well. “ I think we need to begin the process of training more individuals in project management, this would help when we get into meetings discussing durations vs. effort for example, and the need for project management. Also by have some standard for projects templates we can use repeating processes and review project histories to better understand the next projects. (Basically history repeating itself” “ I’ve already discussed the need for all the right resources as soon as possible, including a project manager” “ The assignment of leaders to each of the high level deliverables also worked well and is a technique that should be continued. These lesson lessons learned are my own and we should have full team meeting at the close. Also I should mention that this a process that is currently being invoked by the team now, each Monday during the equipment relocation phase, to discuss lessons learned, for the next set of moves” Next slide - recommendations
- “ Based on the discussions I’ve had with Bob Dvorak and others, I believe that many of project issues could be resolved with the formation of a PMO, with all of the remaining recommendations falling under that areas responsibility. “In a recent article in PM network which was the study of 100 Sr. IT executives, those that felt their projects were being managed successfully within the organization 63 % had a PMO in place as well as a process for aligning projects with the corporate strategy.” “ I am currently working on a detailed recommendation for the development of a PMO, but at a high level some of the benefits to of having a PMO are, training structure, SME for Project Process, Project reviews and audits, resource alignment across multiple projects, projects prioritized and aligned with R&CW corp. strategic plans. “ Further more in order to help alleviate some of resource issues, reporting issues and tracking issues, I would like to see us migrate to project server 2003 which is really a part of Microsoft's EPM (enterprise project management) solution, which integrates project server, project 2003, project web access and outlook integration. Some of the benefits here are standardized project communications, common set of tools, executive level reporting, time tracking (via project web server) and better resource leveling”, A standardized methodology would also help us to make sure that we are all speaking the same languages. Some of this work for these type of projects is being work on by Rudy Lewis, who we have been sharing information with and utilizing some of his processes, however it is the tip of the iceberg, as far as the mix of projects that we have. “ And finally the CMM SEI recommends organizations achieve a level of maturity within the projects, these range from level 1 common language, common process(l2), singular methodology (L3), benchmarking l4 and finally continuous improvements. I believe we are possibly around a level 1 with the stage process, which could be tied to PMBOK.” “ Again, I want to thank you for giving this opportunity today and at this point open the floor to any questions.”