 |
| Top 4 challenges IT leaders face in executing their IT Vision |
|
|
| Are your solutions limited by the capability of your resource pool? |
Every I.T. Project has an elegant solution and a pragmatic solution. How many times do the two converge? Not very often, and for a number of reasons. The foremost being the capability available to deliver a solution vs. the capability required to deliver what is optimum. Capability is primarily a factor of infrastructure and technology choices on the one hand, and resource flexibility available to the organization on the other.
Speaking of new development projects, wherein a completely new solution needs to be delivered, the first question that its manager asks or can afford to ask, is often a good early indicator of the way the project will go. If it is "How soon can we do this", it implies that two prior decision points are not even approached ? "What's the best solution?" and "Who has the capability to deliver it?". Unfortunately, a great many projects will get handed out to project teams that deal with "stuff like this" or worse, to a team which "is available to do it". While this may address the immediate problems of resource utilization or even people management (including heeding to internal 'lobbying') within the I.T. department, the solutions that come out often end up being severely limited on various fronts. The end result, on an average - is an average application that further ties the organization in to a certain technology or at worst, it can lead to a dissatisfied end user and a project that fails its key missions. If a summary view of projects delivered in an organization rank on an average rating of 3.5 out of 5 or lower, in all probability, the organization needs to rethink the way it approaches projects.
Organizations that do address with sincerity, the first question of "What's the best solution", often face the next daunting task of identifying whether the best solution can be implemented. In situations where the necessary skills or experience or capacity is not available internally, use of the in-sourcing and outsourcing options provide a good alternative to either deferring the project or implementing a lesser solution using what is available internally.
Focus has built a particularly good reputation in introducing in-source and outsource options for companies that have not gone this route in the past, or have had limited experience or success with past outsourced projects. We are in a position to provide a vast array of options, including ?
- Recommending state of the art solutions
- Assisting in staff augmentation either on-site or remotely Undertaking turnkey projects or parts of projects as outsourced work to augment not only the development skills, but also bring project management expertise to the table.
- Working out a combination of the above approaches that best suit the client needs
- Advising on managing change internally for going the remote insource or outsource routes
|
We have the capability of offering all of the above at the most competitive prices in the industry. If you would like to speak to us about any such projects where we may be of assistance, please email us at info@focusoftinc.com or call us at 770.551.0901 option 5. You can also email the author of this page directly at jay@focusoftinc.com |
|
| Does your IT team spend more time fixing what is supposed to be delivered? |
There would be very few I.T. departments which have a dearth of projects to be undertaken to meet the enterprise's demands. Project execution graph usually falls behind the automation needs of business processes or the needs of being in step with technological advances. Contrary to the widely held notion, it is not the lack of budgets that prevent I.T. departments from catching up. The main problem often lies in the efficiency with which projects are completed. For I.T. directors wanting to get ahead of the curve, one of the most frustrating realities lie in the amount of time that their department spends on projects that are in progress. The seemingly endless projects are ubiquitous unless the organization has done some serious soul searching in the past and has taken their processes up several notches to be high on the capability maturity curve.
The situation gets to a point where a very small percentage of projects actually go live and start producing that they were intended to, thereby requiring very little maintenance effort. A development team member on one such Fortune 500 division complained to us that of the various projects he worked on as the contractor in the past three years, not a single project had gone live and successful. The amount of corporate dollars wasted on such projects is phenomenal and criminal. While this may be an example on the extreme end, and most likely caused by internal battles for turf as in this case, the situation is still not uncommon, albeit to a lesser extent.
Embarking on a capability maturity program (the CMMI for instance), is an ideal solution, though not an easy one, because it requires a conscious corporate decision and top down leadership. We believe that departments and even individual groups can start on their own in improving their project success ratio.
However, complex problems based on real life situations require simple solutions designed for those same circumstances and proven again and again to be effective. Over the years, Focus has developed its own indigenous I.T. Project Management approach that addresses all key issues that factor in the success of a development project. The model is styled around the PMI guidelines, but especially addresses requirements management related issues using an in-house developed "Requirements Maturity Model", and project life-cycle management issues using the "Project Modeling Decision Tree", also devised and used successfully on major projects. These two facets, with the support of supplementary best practices for project management, provide the key controls that can deliver project success consistently.
We gladly share these models with our clients and work to help implement the approaches not only on outsourced projects that we undertake, but also on projects that are handled in-house by the I.T. groups and where we provide only assistance services. To talk to us, share your experiences and possibly identify areas where we might be of assistance, do contact us at info@focusoftinc.com or call us at 770.551.0901 option 5. You can also email the author of this page directly at jay@focusoftinc.com |
|
| Are Project plans synonymous with Gantt Charts in your company? |
Project Management as an independent discipline dates back only a few decades, before which it was more of an additional responsibility to the job you do. The Project Management Institute (PMI) has consistently pushed the envelope in developing and popularizing standards and best practices. Yet, in very many organizations, these best practices are far from being implemented. Hence the concept of Project Management is still misconstrued very widely as Project Tracking or Schedule tracking. Hence, if the Gantt chart represents the central and often, the only project management document in an organization, then project effectiveness should be expected to be only a fraction of what the organization is capable of achieving.
Focus has in the past worked with clients in implementing sample projects that show case the benefits of a mature methodology. We have delivered successful projects and set up entire development teams for our clients, which implement custom processes and methodologies designed to meet quality, delivery and efficiency expectations. A measure of the extent of success in this area is the fact that a Fortune 500 client has chosen to adapt our process and documentation standards on a corporate level.
Focus has always been a strong advocate of Project Management best practices. Our Project Managers are all PMI certified and also participate actively in PMI activities in local chapters. Retraining on latest trends and techniques is sponsored and mandatory for Project Managers through various seminars and educational events.
We have therefore incorporated key best practices in our Project Management Approach. It addresses all key issues that factor in the success of a software development project. The model especially addresses requirements management related issues using an in-house developed "Requirements Maturity Model", and project life-cycle management issues using the "Project Modeling Decision Tree", also devised and used successfully on major projects. Other standard techniques and practices we use include advanced risk management techniques and the Earned Values Analysis method to quantitatively measure and compare project success in meeting cost and schedule budgets.
For more information, please contact us at info@focusoftinc.com or call us at 770.551.0901 option 5. You can also email the author of this page directly at jay@focusoftinc.com |
|
| Is Customer Satisfaction still a moving target despite having completed many projects |
Quality of a delivered software project is one of the most challenging attributes to evaluate. Is it the same as number and severity of defects found during acceptance testing? Is it ease of use? Is it conformance to specifications? Or largely just user perception? Or a combination of these and more?
We think, it is mainly about meeting end user expectations in terms of functionality, performance and delivery. And the key to meeting these expectations lies in knowing, understanding and communicating them. Therefore, we perceive Quality Assurance as very closely tied to Requirements Management.
Hence our Models are also designed around closely integrating the two,
- firstly, in terms of setting expectations by extensively, precisely and comprehensively documenting the requirements;
- secondly, by implementing processes to effectively fulfill the requirements,
- and finally by monitoring and measuring our success in meeting them.
We follow a custom "Requirements Maturity Model" that guides our project team in qualifying requirements to serve the needs of various Project Life Cycle stages. Differentiating 'what is known' from 'what is known really well' has a significant impact on both project costs and project risks. This is because quality of inputs that go into the design and development phases to the last level of detail, will determine the outcome of the construction effort. If these inputs including data to backup the requirements is reviewed sufficiently by the end user group, then the probability of getting the job done right the very first time (no rework; no schedule slippage) is high. It is well known that the later the change in requirements, the higher its cost impact. Hence our approach focuses on spending more time up-front towards developing mature requirements to feed the design and development phases. We have seen a sharp drop in system acceptance issues and acceptance time, while the process itself is much smoother and almost mechanical.
To facilitate effective implementation of the Requirements Maturity Model, we also use a "Project Modelling Decision Tree" that we have developed internally over time. It determines how to construct the Project life cycle itself, such that the process of developing mature requirements is facilitated. For instance, the complexity in a certain project may require some basic structure to be put in place to enable the requirement generators to further develop their inputs to the development team. In such a case, the construction phase may require to be split into phases, where a quick prototype is put in place on priority based on preliminary requirements, which helps further define requirements to the point where they are ready for final construction.
These approaches have helped us achieve very short acceptance phases, with quick transition out of projects while maintaining high levels of end user satisfaction. If this topic is of interest to you and would like to discuss more, we would love to hear from you. Feel free to contact us at info@focusoftinc.com or call us at 770.551.0901 option 5. You can also email the author of this page directly at jay@focusoftinc.com |
|
|
