Forselius - New look at project management triangle

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New Look at Project Management Triangle
2°°°°International Conference on
IT Data collection, Analysis and Benchmarking
Tokyo (Japan) - October 22, 2014
Pekka Forselius
4SUM Partners
pekka.forselius@4sumpartners.com
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2IT Confidence 2014 – October 22, 2014 http://itconfidence2014.wordpress.com
Prj Mgmt Triangle Goals of the presentation
G1. Introduce the main elements any Project Manager
should take into account
G2. Propose new viewpoints on the PM Triangle for a
better management of a project
G3. Introduce the “northernSCOPE™” approach and
related process

•One of the ten knowledge
areas of project
management (source:
Project Management Body
of Knowledge, PMI)
•… is primarily concerned
with defining and
controlling what is and is
not included in the project.
Project Scope Management – What?Prj Mgmt Triangle

Project Management TrianglePrj Mgmt Triangle
4

Observations about PM trianglePrj Mgmt Triangle
”If you can’t measure it, you cannot manage it!” –
For management purposes all three dimensions
need to be measured, and the measurement
principles shall be defined. Examples:
Cost = Supplier’s development cost from requirements specification
to ready to install.
Time = Duration of development in months, from the same
activities as above.
Scope = Quantity or size of the outcomes.
Shape and size of the triangle are not constant!

A new look at the PM trianglePrj Mgmt Triangle
Everybody wants more
outcomes with same cost
and time, i.e. ”higher
triangle”, but how to get
it?
What are the important
elements of a triangle?
How to influence the
shape of a triangle?

Elements of a PM trianglePrj Mgmt Triangle

Examples of IT PM trianglesPrj Mgmt Triangle

Public sector reality in 2013Prj Mgmt Triangle
The numbered projects (1-6) used northernSCOPE™ management concept!

My target cost and speed for budgetingPrj Mgmt Triangle
Is this level acceptable for my company? Is it too ambitious? What will be the
target Pay Back Period?

My sub-system estimates vs. ”standards”Prj Mgmt Triangle

Business case, starting pointPrj Mgmt Triangle
• Early requirements from a
feasibility study, including
business processes
• Stakeholder analysis, including
users
• Scope statement, system
overview picture
• Will another system be replaced?
• Investment calculations,
including numbers of
transactions, volumes, etc.
• Rough budget and schedule

Amount of outcomesPrj Mgmt Triangle
• Size of the software, estimated
and measured in Function Points
• Methods: all ISO/IEC FSM
standards, most likely FiSMA
method (ISO/IEC 29881:2010) at
all accuracy levels
• Tools: FiSMA 1.1 Size Estimator
and Experience® Service
• An independent Scope Manager
recommended (not necessary to be
external)

Focus on quality tooPrj Mgmt Triangle
• Quality requirements MUST be
connected to functional
requirements
• Method: start connection from
entire system and business
processes
• Tools: FiSMA Quality
Requirements Analysis, ISO/IEC
9126 and 25010 (Software
product quality standards)

Capability of Developer TeamPrj Mgmt Triangle
• The better the capability of
developer team, the less re-work
needed, and the more competitive
price they can propose!
• The capability level depends on
how well the developers can:
• Read, question, communicate, and understand
the functional requirements
• Design the functions
• Provide the program code
• Test the outcome units and integrated
components
• Prepare the installation of software.
NOTE! The
required developer
skills are all related
to SDLC –standard
(ISO/IEC 12207)

Capability of Product OwnerPrj Mgmt Triangle
• The better the capability of product
owner, the faster the delivery of
software!
• The capability level depends on
how clearly the product owner can:
• Recognize and define all users
• Write all necessary user stories
• Specify terms and define ER model
• Draw business process charts
• Write and update use cases
• Define functional requirements
• Specify quality requirements
NOTE! The skills
required from the
product owner have
NOTHING to do with
management approach
(agile or not).

The most important metricsPrj Mgmt Triangle
• To evaluate first the
reality of project plans,
and in the end the
success of the project
we need to measure:
– Delivery speed = h/b
(FPs/month)
– Unit price = a/h (€/FP)

northernSCOPE™ - What?Prj Mgmt Triangle
• A professional scope management concept for
software intensive development and maintenance
from Finnish Software Measurement Association
(FiSMA).
• A management concept that describes the Scope
Manager’s work with twelve steps, covering the
development life cycle from feasibility study and
initial requirements to program closure and
collecting lessons learned.

Three corner stones of northernSCOPE™Prj Mgmt Triangle
• Software project sizing using Functional Size
Measurement (where appropriate) FP
• Unit pricing in cost per function point €/FP
• Independent Scope Manager provides scope
transparency and governance

12 steps of northernSCOPE™Prj Mgmt Triangle
Source: CrossTalk
January/February
2010

Functional size – Function pointsPrj Mgmt Triangle
• 5 ISO/IEC standard methods
• Easy to learn and use
• Training and support available
• FiSMA 1.1 method transparent equally for the
product owner and the developer
• All methods based on functional user requirements
• If no requirements or no delivered functionality, no
size measurement can be done.

Unit price €/FPPrj Mgmt Triangle
• ISBSG has collected more than 7000 projects
• FiSMA has collected more than 1000 projects
• Almost 1000 applications in the M&S repository
• Productivity varies a lot, but with good data and
good classifiers it’s possible to find very realistic
price level.
• Experience® tools support estimation with high
quality knowledge databases.
• 100 €/FP is very inexpensive, 2000 €/FP is
extremely expensive in most of the cases.

Independent Scope ManagerPrj Mgmt Triangle
• Almost 150 northernSCOPE™ Certified Scope
Managers (see ECQA and 4sumpartners.com)
• Finland, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands,
Peru, USA
• Also in Victoria, Australia, where the
southernSCOPE is applied
• Five days training program available in English and
in Finnish, also partially in Danish.

Thank you!Prj Mgmt Triangle
• Pekka Forselius, MSc, MBA,
Certified Scope Manager, Immediate Past
President of ISBSG, Senior Advisor at FiSMA
• email:
pekka.forselius@4sumpartners.com
• see also www.4sumpartners.com,
www.fisma.fi and www.isbsg.org

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