Posts Tagged project management
Gartner Highlights Key Predictions for IT Organizations and Users in 2010 and Beyond
Posted by Rudolf Melik in Automation and Collaboration, Cloud computing, Current Affairs, Enterprise Software, IT Management, project management, software as a service on January 21st, 2010
Here are Gartner’s predictions for the coming years in IT:
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1278413
The most interesting one is “By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets”. The argument they make is that essentially more and more organizations will use cloud computing and refrain from buying their own equipment. Also, more and more users will access corporate data using personal mobile communications and their own laptops. In other words the company will own and control less hardware; the equipment will all be owned and managed by third parties.
This is a surprising and rather aggressive prediction. I agree with the trend and I can see a future in which IT departments focus a lot more on strategic initiatives rather than managing now commoditized IT equipment and infrastructure. Cloud computing is radically transforming the IT function and will have a major unquestionable impact on IT budgets and how IT is perceived within the organization. But 2012 is awfully close. I do not think the transformation will occur so quickly.
The Laws of Simplicity
Posted by Rudolf Melik in Automation and Collaboration, Enterprise Software, project management, project management software, project workforce management on January 20th, 2010
In these prior blog posts:
Occam’s Principle Applied to IT Investments
I outlined how Occam’s Razor principle could apply to product design and IT investments. I recently stumbled on to the writings of John Maeda who has authored a book on the laws of simplicity. A summary of the laws can be found here:
http://lawsofsimplicity.com/category/keys?order=ASC
A review of the laws is a good refresher for anyone in charge of project management, new product development and software design. The last law states: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. This is actually Occam’s principle which I described and provided some examples for in the above mentioned posts. In fact as John Maeda mentions in his book and on his website Occam’s principle is really an encapsulation of the first nine laws.
The Importance of Taking Breaks
Posted by Rudolf Melik in Good Books and Articles, project workforce management, workforce management on January 13th, 2010
Here is an interesting article on the importance of taking breaks:
Some excerpts (although reading the entire article is definitely highly recommended):
Ever wonder why our best ideas come when we’re in the shower, driving, daydreaming, or sleeping?
When you look deeper into these ingeniously elegant solutions and brilliant flashes of insight you can see that they came at strange times and in random locations. They didn’t occur while actually working on the problem but after an intense, prolonged struggle with it followed by a break. A change of scene and time away seems to have played a part.
Most “creatives”—artists, musicians, writers, etc.—instinctively know that idea incubation involves seemingly unproductive times, but that those downtimes and timeouts are important ingredients of immensely productive and creative periods. But until fairly recently the how, when, and why of being kissed by the muse was something of a myth and mystery, explained only by serendipity.
New studies show that creative revelations tend to come when the mind is engaged in an activity unrelated to the issue at hand; pressure is not conducive to recombining knowledge in new and different ways, the defining mark of creativity.
While no one yet knows the exact process, there’s an important implication for all of us: putting pressure on ourselves to try and make our brains work harder, more intensely, or more quickly, may only slow down our ability to arrive at new insights. In other words, if you’re looking to engineer a breakthrough, it may only come through a break. Your brain needs the calm before its storm.
As one example, one of the best decisions we made at Tenrox was to shut the company down between Christmas and New Year’s. We do not schedule any internal or external project work, customer calls, visits or implementations during this time. Our professional services and support team is also asked to provide nothing more than essential services by a handful of people who are on call. We have done this for the last two years and it has been an incredible success. Our team returns to work well rested, creative, and fully reenergized. We very much encourage our team to take breaks and all their vacation time on a regular basis. Working hard without sufficient breaks and “off the grid” time leads to an unproductive uninspired team.
Would be great to hear your perspective and suggestions for taking breaks and how you apply this to your project teams.
The Year in Review in Software & Services and 90% Software Maintenance Margins
Posted by Rudolf Melik in Enterprise Software, project management software, project workforce management, software as a service on December 25th, 2009
Here is a good short review of enterprise software and services stories in 2009.
What caught my eye was Brian’s referral to 90% software maintenance margin as a bad thing. Brain, most software companies invest significant dollars in infrastructure, R&D and new product development. Healthy profit margins from on-demand services and support are an absolute necessity. Without those margins no software company can attract great talent, investors or even consider any new ideas.
As an example, at Tenrox while 9 out 10 new customers are opting for Tenrox on-demand we still do have and support on-premise customers with perpetual licenses. One of these customers had gone without support for eighteen months thinking the software works great and they do not need our support, updates or innovations. Well something went wrong and they called our service team asking for help. They wanted to pay time and material for us to jump on the problem and fix it. We explained our policy that they must reactivate support, pay a penalty for the reactivation, and get up to date before we can even look at the problem. This customer was quite frustrated and did not take the news very well at all.
As a software company we have no choice but to establish such policies. Tenrox is not a consulting “time and material” provider. The profits and good margins from on-demand services and support are absolutely essential for continued innovation and first class customer support.
Comparing observed behavior to project management actuals
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project workforce management on March 20th, 2009
Coming back from a vacation is never easy. I have been trying to finish this post for the last week and time was just in short supply. Anyhow, I have finally caught up and gotten back to normal. In the last post I decided to embark on an experiment to examine what if any differences there would be between what one observes people doing at work versus what they report using our project management software, weekly timesheets, and status reports.
I sampled people in various departments at Tenrox twice a week as discreetly as I could in order not to disturb them or attract any attention and change behavior. I employed the following rules during my observations:
- Observe 2 different people in each department and record what they are doing at that moment; I called each of these observations a sample
- Exclude all managers and executives from the experiment; except for R&D managers because I wanted to measure how much they actually spend on various tasks, specially on meetings
- Take 2 samples per day; twice per week; for 8 weeks
- The samples must be taken randomly at different times of the day and of different people
After the sampling was complete I compared the approved timesheets and status reports to the observed activity. Here is a summary of my observations:
Table 1 – Percentage of Time Working (includes meetings)
| Based on Observation | Based on Timesheet | |
| Account executives | 88% | 100% |
| Inside sales | 81% | 100% |
| Marketing | 88% | 100% |
| R&D team members | 94% | 100% |
| R&D management/project managers | 100% | 100% |
| Support | 94% | 100% |
| Professional Services | 100% | 100% |
Table 2 – Percentage of Time in Meetings
| Based on Observation | Based on Timesheet | |
| Account executives | 13% | 0% |
| Inside sales | 6% | 0% |
| Marketing | 6% | 2% |
| R&D team members | 13% | 8% |
| R&D management/project managers | 63% | 45% |
| Support | 6% | 0% |
| Professional Services | 6% | 5% |
In my observations I considered that the person was “not working” when they were talking about non-work related topics, or just taking a break (such as a smoking break, coffee break etc.). Also, to be fair, for those specific individuals who took longer “breaks” during the day, I took a note and checked to see if they left later that day to make up for it. If this was not the case then “percentage worked” reflects the deficit.
Well! The experiment was much harder to run and took a lot more time to perform than I had expected. Here is what I learned and the action items:
1) Broken Breakdown Structure
In our timesheet system we have the concept of a Task and a WorkType: Task = Project + WorkType
WorkType is used to define the type of work one does; and it can apply to any project. For example “Design” is a work type, “ABC Design” is a task you report time against when you are doing design work for project ABC.
One of my first surprises was that we had more than 6 different “Meeting” work types in the system such as “General Meeting”, “Meeting”, “PS Meeting”, “R&D Meeting”, “Marketing Meetings”. With each of these work types associated to one or more team-specific and customer-specific projects.
I had to generate time reports that included all of these work types to be able to measure how much time is being reported as time spent in meetings.
We definitely do not need 6 meeting work types. First action item is to clean this up so we have clear and consistent work types used by all teams to report meeting time in their teams and for any projects.
2) What’s a Meeting?
We have to make sure everyone has the same definition of a meeting. For example, R&D managers and sales team have a lot of 1 to 1 or small group meetings in their offices. This time was not reported as meeting time which is fine as long as we do so consistently. Looking at the samples versus what is reported in timesheets, and after speaking to a few people, I can see that this is not the case right now. Also some people marked some training sessions as meeting time whereas others recorded this time against a training work type.
3) Now let’s look at Table 1 results and my analysis of the differences:
- Our account executives do take time during the day to socialize with each other and other team members. However they work hard and I know they are responsive to customers even when they are called upon outside business hours. So the observations while valid are not a cause for concern.
- Our inside sales team also does some socializing and participates in meetings but their timesheets report no such details. However, they have a pretty tough job. Making hundreds of calls per week following up on Web leads and other marketing activities. I hear them sometimes, they show remarkable patience and they actually care about their work so the breaks are very much needed to let some steam out.
- Marketing which includes our Web team definitely has room for improvement. The observations confirmed what I already suspected. This team can and should do better than it does now. Web team members have to feel more intensity and a sense of urgency in their day-to-day deliverables. The experiment has actually provided me with new insight on this team.
- R&D team members require a lot of freedom so they can be creative, intense, and excited about what they do. Therefore, given the great success of the last two releases, the occasional walking, chatting and longer breaks are not a cause for concern.
- I am willing to cut the Support team some slack too. As part of this experiment, I decided not to just let one number lead me to any specific conclusion. Our 90 days plus accounts receivable (A/R) as a percentage of total receivables is near an all time low, our blocking support issues and SLA (service level agreement) compliance were well under control, so the team is more than justified in taking a break here and there. Of course, this would have been a red flag if the other metrics came in on the critical side. Definitely I will sample this group again if and when I see our A/R creeping up or an increase in SLA-compliance related issues.
4) Let’s look at Table 2 results and my analysis of the differences:
- The account executives report time at a very high level; simply reporting hours worked against a task called “Sales Activities” so you cannot tell how much time was spent on calls, in meetings or anything else. I do not think we need more detailed time reporting for this team especially since most of the team is comprised of veterans.
- Our inside sales team also reports time at a high level. I think this should change. We need to cross reference their timesheets with phone logs, qualified lead counts and lead quality. Although I understand they need to take some breaks from time to time, I think more detailed time reporting will help us ensure this team stays on top of its game and reassess what they spend time on if and when our lead count or quality goes through a rough period.
- Marketing which includes our Web team was inconsistent in their timesheet reports. Some people are reporting time spent in meetings and some are not, some are providing more detailed time reporting against specific tasks and some are not. I will meet with the head of that team to discuss these inconsistencies and agree on what the reports should include. I think the marketing team, specially the Web team, should provide a more accurate picture of what tasks and projects they are working on (for example: search engine optimization, trade show preparation, Web site design, PR, etc.). Right now it is a mixed bag.
- In comparing what was observed versus what was reported, R&D team members were remarkably accurate in reporting how much time they spent in meetings. The percentage spent on meetings was higher than I expected but this is probably because the R&D team is gearing up to work on the next major release so specification meetings and reviews are likely to be more frequent and longer.
- R&D management/project managers are spending a lot of time in meetings. The discrepancies in the percentage spent in meetings come from higher level executives who are not providing detailed reporting of what they are spending time on. If I take the higher level managers out then what was observed is in the range of what is being reported. Still, I think perhaps too much time is being spent in larger group meetings by high level managers. I prefer more of smaller, shorter, targeted group meetings to fewer large meetings, even for a major release than what I observed.
- Support team was a mixed bag as well. Those on the on-demand side are not reporting at the project level or any details of what they do. On the other hand, core application support team who is spending time with customers is providing very detailed time reporting. This should be addressed as we need to track costs of our on-demand initiatives and any time our on-demand team spends with customers.
Summary and Closing Remarks
This was quite a valuable experiment. Comparing observations to what is being reported to actual results has provided me with new actionable information that will help us improve how we run the various teams and our tracking systems.
The conclusion I draw from this exercise is no single data point can help management run their business well. You gain insight by looking at all of them combined: project management reports, observing people, walking and talking to people, customer surveys, and looking at the company results. That is the only way you can spot potential problems and prevent them or identify best practices and promote them to other parts of the company.
I would highly recommend this exercise for any high level executive or line of business manager. These types of activities help us get closer to the action, get the real facts; not just see things through rose colored glasses, and better understand the inner workings of our teams.
Sampling as a workforce productivity measurement tool?
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project workforce management on February 24th, 2009
If I asked you which one is more accurate what would you say?
1) 4 weeks of approved timesheets showing what your project teams have been working on
or
2) you get up and walk around twice a day and only two days a week, at different times of the day and different days of the week, to observe what randomly chosen people from different groups are working on. As much as possible try not to interrupt people or look too “suspicious” as this would change the results. What you are trying to do is observe without interference. Take notes and record your data each time. After 4 weeks you have some sample data.
At the end of the 4 week period, compare your sample measurements to the timesheets, and status reports you have for that same period.
I ran this expirement for 4 weeks by observing the following departments in our company: sales, support, R&D and service teams. The results were quite surprising. I will share the results with you in a future blog. In the mean time, I look forward to getting your feedback on which option you think is a more accurate measurement of what people are working on.
Obama project management
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project management on January 21st, 2009
Reporters and people alike have come to admire these distinct qualities in Obama: his generally calm and friendly demeanor, his message of respectful disagreement and yet cooperation, … trying to find common goals and rivals coming together to achieve these goals. Of course, all of this is quite a radical shift from the type of message we have seen from both sides of the political spectrum. So much of what Obama stands for (and hopefully will stand for throughout his presidency) can be applied to how we run our businesses, and projects.
Just like many of you, throughout my career, I have had my differences with some people. Whenever, I or any of my rivals chose to firmly disagree, argue, stand our ground or take a dogmatic position on an issue we all ended up losing somehow. This is specially true in any type of partnership. Hard ideological positions create nothing but obstruction, or worse destruction.
As an example, take the senator that single-handedly blocked the confirmation of Hillary Clinton on January 20th, knowing full well that she would be easily confirmed the next day whether he likes it or not. What is the point of obstructing and delaying what is an inevitable outcome? Instead, he could have simply stated his objections, understand that he has to work with this new team and get on with doing his job. Possibly spending some of that time and energy on the credit crisis instead. These are the politics of the future. As a friend of mine said, chances are when he runs for reelection he will be replaced by voters with someone who gets that this mindset change must occur.
So all of this got me thinking. How would Obama manage projects? I look forward to reading your thoughts on situations such as below and how you think an Obama type character would handle them.
- Dealing with a difficult customer: A customer that refuses to pay any invoices due because the project is late. The customer has changed project scope several times but does not think the scope changes are the root cause of the delays in achieving the milestones. He does not agree that the customer's team bares any responsibility whatsoever for the project's issues. The customer is absolutely convinced that his internal resources are doing a fine job and all the blame lies with your team.
- Internal Politics: Your team and your projects are doing fine. So the "boss" and other project managers constantly raid your team for emergencies and try to take your resources away to fight fires. When you confront them they explain how urgent their issues are and how they absolutely have to "borrow" these resources. You know, of course, that it is only a matter of when not if that your projects will start to be yellow and red flagged as a result of these workforce planning (or lack there of) issues.
How would an Obama-type leader handle these project management challenges?
Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 3
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project management on January 17th, 2009
We covered the following 2009 trends for project management in the Part 1 and Part 2.
- #10 The increasing correlation between project management and operational excellence
- #9 The CFO and the project manager friendship
- #8 The rise of the Project Workforce
- #7. Dispersed customers, projects and teams kill politics
- #6. Finding the right talent gets a lot easier
- #5. Emphasis shifts from project management to workforce management
Let’s look at the last four trends.
- #4. Uncertainty is the new normal
The unceasing uncertainty we have all felt about our jobs, our homes, the economy and the world in the last two years is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. The credit crisis, terrorism, climate change, and prolonged wars will continue to directly and indirectly impact our lives, our psyche. However, with human being’s remarkable ability to adjust to any situation we are starting to get used to it! When this whole war/economic mess started I remember how shocked and surprised I was every time I turned on the TV. Now, I do not watch as much predictably bad news anymore, and if when I do, I know it will be bad … so it does not really bother me nearly as much as it used to.
- #3. The rapidly increasing service web
The business model of virtually every large monolithic company is under attack. The web has enabled small, fast moving, low cost global competitors to emerge virtually overnight. This is even more true in the enterprise software space. Small companies with deep expertise in a particular problem area are able to build and offer Web service based solutions that solve the customer’s pain point a factor of time-cost faster than the ERP/established vendor alternative. With ever improving collaboration, Web service and integration technologies this trend will only accelerate in 2009.
- #2. Enterprise software technology cross-pollination gains momentum
Web services and new technologies continue to create a powerful seemingly perpetual wave of innovation in productivity tools. One of the more recent developments that is starting to gain further momentum has been is the surge in hybrid software technologies. Here are some examples (with varying degrees of success):
- ERPs offering and embedding analytics
- Project management vendors embedding business process management capabilities (true enterprise class workflow engines)
- Project management and workforce management (not just time tracking but also workforce planning, time for payroll, leave time and other integrated HR/labor related functions/services) hybrid applications
- Accounting systems offering CRM and other enterprise solutions
Generally, hybrids that create large monolithic all or none propositions do not provide compelling value. Vendors with such solutions seek vendor lock-in as their ultimate goal and only pay lip service to the true goal of standards-based pluggable solutions that are based on Web services allowing the customer to pick and choose the services that best address their needs. However, modular Web Services oriented hybrid technologies that can be quickly implemented are on the increase and offer a compelling alternative to the legacy application models.
- #1. Leadership matters
Above all, I think one of the most important lessons of the last several years has been the critical importance of the leader. It does not matter who is on the bus, what great technologies one has access to, how many best practices you are fully versed in, it is all for nothing if the people that lead your organization and projects lack the leadership skills and intuition to make the right decisions. An incompetent leader can lead the best team, the best technologies and the organization with the most abundant resources to total and shameful failure. The primary reason we are in the mess we are in now is extremely poor ignorant leadership at some of the largest public and private institutions throughout the world. We have learned, the hard way, that choosing a bad leader or project manager can be hazardous to us, to our way of life. I think, in 2009 every single one of us, whether we are executives, members of a board of directors, members of a committee, voters … will pay a lot more attention to who we pick as our leaders, representatives and our project managers.
These are my predictions about what to expect for project management in 2009. It should be helpful to consider these trends in your business plans so you can leap ahead of your competition.
What are your thoughts about how project management practices and technologies will change in 2009?
Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 2
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project management on January 15th, 2009
In Part 1 of this blog we looked at following three trends for 2009:
- #10 The increasing correlation between project management and operational excellence
- #9 The CFO and the project manager friendship
- #8 The rise of the Project Workforce
Now let’s look at the next three trends.
- #7 Dispersed customers, projects and teams kill politics
The flat world and access to a global talent pool has significantly changed the inner workings and team dynamics of virtually all organizations. There are many disadvantages to working with remote dispersed team members, which most of us are doing today. We tend to be happier, more loyal to the team, learn faster, and accomplish more as a team when we work physically close to each other. On the other hand, there are less emotions and politics with a dispersed team; people tend to pay more attention to getting the work done, than playing office politics; and their performance ultimately dictates how they are evaluated. In today’s increasingly dispersed teams office politics is certainly on the decline.
- #6 Finding the right talent gets a lot easier
It is much harder to find the matching resources you need when you limit yourself only to looking for talent in a local market. The flat world, Internet collaboration technologies have made it possible for organizations to tap large remote pools of talent at very competitive rates. For example, at Tenrox, we are increasingly leveraging specialized programmers working (probably) from their homes in Russia, Eastern Europe and at outsourcing shops in India. These resources are not replacing our full time staff; they complement our team by working on projects on a need basis. It allows Tenrox to remain flexible, not to over-hire, and yet quickly staff projects when required. With better collaboration technologies, improving quality of global resources, and our own improved knowledge of how to manage such projects, this process is becoming a lot easier and rewarding to execute.
- #5 Emphasis shifts from project management to workforce management
The project management discipline has traditionally emphasized the science of project management. Project managers and contributors are encouraged to follow strict templates, guidelines and steps to ensure a project is executed successfully. However, in spite of the increasing number of certified project managers and great project management tools, projects continue to show high failure rates, or high rates of disappointment by being too late, cost too much, or not fully meet their intended objectives. Numerous studies have looked at why projects disappoint. Many of these studies often conclude that better project management, communication, stakeholder involvement and change controls would have reduced failure rate. However, as books like Built to Last (Collins Business; 1 edition; November 2, 2004) suggest while best practices and better tools help there is nothing more important than picking the most qualified and best-fit resources to run the project (what Jim Collins called having the right people on the bus). Having the right people on the team makes everything easier; in fact, less process and less enforcement is needed since great team members innately know what needs to get done and just do it. As a result, more and more organizations are investing in cataloging their resources, understanding their resource’s capabilities and interests, and using more sophisticated workforce planning tools to find the best resources for their projects.
In the last and final part of this blog we will look at the top 4 project management trends in 2009.
Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009
Posted by Rudolf Melik in project management on January 14th, 2009
2008 was an eventful prosperous year for the project management practice, project management service and solution providers:
- Several independent vendors merged with larger entities; many more new small companies with innovative technologies emerged on to the scene. Given the poor macro picture, the amount of M&A and startup activity in this space shows how much interest there is and how much more there is to do, to improve in project management.
- What do you mean you don’t do on-demand?! On-demand adoption surged in 2008 and is now the standard way to deploy project management software. In fact, the tables have turned. Vendors that do not offer on-demand solutions look out of place, out of touch with the market.
- Project management continued to gain credibility as a legitimate profession that is very much in need given today’s complex project, workforce, market realities and regulatory requirements.
- Working remotely, virtual offices, working from home, are now almost as accepted as working from the office in an increasing number of industries and work types. It is now common to find work arrangements that account for some work being done from home.
The stage has been set for some very exciting changes in the project management world. In a three part series, I discuss ten potential project management trends that may be more prominent in 2009.
- #10 The increasing correlation between project management and operational excellence
It used to be that senior company executives such as the CEO, CFO and board members would generally stay away from project management related decisions. The expectation was that CIO, COO and other operational executives would “take care of” ensuring that the company has effective project management practices. In fact, most executives generally regarded project management as something the “techies”, field level workers and mid level managers should worry about.
In today’s highly competitive flat world, the “Chinese wall” between executives and operations has broken down. In 2009, we will continue to see increasing sponsorship, collaboration, and direct involvement of senior executives in project management initiatives. Senior executives have come to appreciate the direct link between effective project management processes, best practices and tools and operational excellence. This task is no longer delegated away and deemed to be a tactical activity. Senior executives and board members view project management improvement initiatives as a strategic investment.
- #9 The CFO and the project manager friendship
An increasingly project-based service-oriented economy has led to more complex customer engagements and billing arrangements. By instituting charge backs, even internal departments have to justify their costs, deliver services efficiently, and earn the business of other entities within the same organization. Consequently, for CFOs measuring project value and recognizing revenue in compliance with various GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) cost accounting and revenue recognition regulations has become an even more daunting task. The intricacies of estimating project value have created unprecedented ties between financial executives and projects managers who have to collaborate to produce incontestable project value assessments that can withstand the various forms of potential financial and project audits the organization may be subjected to. Given the current trends, the CFO/project management alliance is likely to grow stronger in 2009.
- #8 The rise of the Project Workforce
As explained in my book The Rise of the Project Workforce (www.projectworkforcebook.com) more and more individuals choose the projects they want to work on rather than the company they work for. Similarly, more companies are adopting the Hollywood model for a larger percentage of their workforce. In this model a project team is quickly assembled to execute a well defined objective; the team is just as quickly discharged once the project (the movie) has been completed. This flexibility makes both the company and the workforce more agile in a rapidly changing competitive marketplace.
In Part II we will look at the next three trend predictions for project management in 2009.
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