pmi newsletter oct 2014 · 2017-08-17 · mangalyaan project at your leisure and share your key...
TRANSCRIPT
Thanks and Best Wishes
Soumen De, PMP
Page 1
Editor’s NoteEditor’s NoteDear Friends,
Greetings from PMI Bangalore India Chapter!
The month of September had significant events both at Chapter and National events. At
the Chapter, we had our Annual Members Meet (AMM) where we not only presented our
accomplishments on different fronts and presented our financials, but also got approval
on selected portion of our bylaws that will enable our Chapter to strive for operational excellence which in
turn will help us deliver significantly more value to our members. We also had the annual Signature PM
Footprints event in September which celebrated successful completion of 236 PM Footprints session
spread over eight years. To have this session run non-stop every fortnight is one accomplishment that
makes us all feel proud. The highlight of the event were keynote presentation by two seasoned speakers
who spoke on their personal experiences on the topic of entrepreneurship and leadership respectively.
This event reinforced our Chapter endeavor to provide our members a platform through which we all can
learn, share and grow from each other experiences.
thAt a national level, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, was put on Mars orbit on 24
September 2014. India now joins the elite club of nations, i.e., the US, Russia and Europe to reach Mars
Orbit. It reached Mars orbit, as planned, in 323 days covering 650 million km distance. Over the next 6
months, Mangalyaan will study the mineral composition on Mars and also look for the presence of
methane, a chemical key to life on Earth. It is India's first interplanetary mission and Indian Space
Research organization (ISRO) has become the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after the Soviet space
program, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It is also the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first
attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so. The total cost of the mission was approximately $70 million
and is the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken since Martian exploration began. This
prompted our honorable Prime Minister to famously say that ride to Mars cost us Rs. 7/km compared to a
typical auto rickshaw ride of Rs. 10 /km. As Project Managers, it signifies the amount of cost management
done for this project. This was a demonstration of not only the deep technology capability but also strong
Project Management skills that our scientists at ISRO demonstrated to deliver this project as per plan.
There are plenty of information on this project in the internet and ISRO site. Do read more about the
Mangalyaan project at your leisure and share your key Project Management findings and learning with us.
Happy Reading.
Chapter News
Editorial Board
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
-Capt. L. N. Prasad
Q. What is the cost effective
technique to achieve significant
improvements in organization's
project management
effectiveness called?
Chapter News
- Capt. L. N. Prasad
Project Based Organization
Culture . . .
- Seshadri Chatterjee
Pre Project Preparation
- Parvej Islam
Spotlight
Continuous Integration . . .
- Ranan Battacharya
Some Experiences during
Training . . .
- Chakravarthy Rajagopalan
The Lighter side of PM
- Sudheendra Koushik
DID YOU KNOW?
Co
nte
nts
Continued on Page 7...
PM Footprints: th On 11 September
Mr. Jacob Mathews, Supervisor,
Software Engineering Division Otivus
Inc. (Southern California) USA spoke
on the topic
"The Strategies
- Dealing with
North
American
Companies”.
thOn 27 September 2014 the Chapter celebrated ththe 8 PM Footprints Anniversary at Hotel Pride
Bangalore. Nearly 80 members of the Chapter
attended the celebrations. As part of the
anniversary two key note speakers Mr. Buddhadeb
Dasgupta of Nous Info systems and Mr. Srikant
Rao Founder and CEO of Affordable Business
Solutions Spoke on the topics “Project Leadership
and Art of Managing
Relationships & Value at
Bottom of The Pyramid
– An entrepreneurial
Journey” respectively.
Murali Santhanam, PMP
Namita Gupta, PMP, PMI-ACP
Rama K, PMP, PMI-ACP
Shikha Vaidh, PMP, PMI-ACP
Soumen De, PMP
Vittal Vijayakumar, PMP
2 Page
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
Project Based Organization Culture -
Organizational Project Culture (OPC)Seshadri Chatterjee, PMP
Steps to create an ideal OPC:
•
•
•
•
Create a OPC Steering committee
Communicate OPC to the whole
organization
Measure the gap between
organization current culture (OCC)
and ideal OPC
Develop strategies to close the gap
between OCC and OPC.
Create an OPC Steering committee:
A cross-functional steering committee
that consists of a mix of management
and staff will lead the project, guiding the
approach for the organization. This
committee will report directly to their
Sponsor, the Management of the
organization. It will be important for the
Steering Committee to define their
purpose, roles and responsibilities as well
as their communication strategy and
expected outcomes. They will develop
sub-committees of staff who will help to
manage the on-going project change
requirements.
Communicate OPC to the whole
organization:
Once the Steering Committee has
undertaken the first step, they will
communicate the policy to the rest of the
organization explaining why it is
important and how it will benefit all.
Measure the gap between
organization current culture (OCC)
and ideal OPC:
For measuring the base point for the OCC
in relation to the OPC, staff of all levels
will be asked to complete a survey. These
individuals might spend a lot of time on
projects or very little time. They may be
a project leader or a project team
member. They may be working on a small
project on their own or be part of a very
large project. They might provide
resources to a project but not actually be
involved in any project directly. All these
individuals should be included to provide
a 360-degree feedback view of the
current organizational culture with regard
to project management. The survey will
identify the gaps and where they exist
and will also gauge the organization's
readiness for change. Analysis of the
results will help the organization to
identify the organizational forces likely to
drive or impede change and what
changes are necessary to close the gap
between OCC and OPC.
Develop strategies to close the gap
between OCC and OPC:
It's management's responsibility to
determine how to close the gap between
the OCC and OPC for their organization.
Which strategies they want to follow? And
these decisions have to be taken by the
top management after giving due
weightage and feedbacks from the
project key stakeholders.
The benefits of Organization Project
Culture (OPC) can be as follows:
Projects will be more aligned to
corporate strategies.
Business objectives can be met in a
more measurable way.
Projects can meet the customer
expectations.
Projects are implemented within the
budget ensuring no cost overrun.
Projects are on schedule with support
from organization.
Time to market can be improved.
A project team will have high
satisfaction lowering attrition among
the team members.
Benefits of having OPC:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The term organizational project culture or
OPC is a very new concept. In a more
fundamental way the organization culture
is made up of the attitudes, values,
beliefs and behaviors of its employees. It
reflects the demonstrated values and
principles of the workplace, permeating
everything an organization does.
Essentially, it can make or break your
organization.
The ideal organizational culture is one in
which projects are considered in strategic
planning and are implemented to support
an organization's corporate strategy and
corporate objectives. In this way, they
receive the necessary attention and
support of senior management and the
organization's resources to allow them to
succeed. The OPC is basically a method
by which the organization supports its
ongoing projects.
The basic objective for creating an OPC
is-
To understand their current
organizational culture and how it
could be improved.
To measure where they stand today
against the ideal organizational
project culture
To understand the goal and strategy
to close the gap (between OCC and
OPC)
To develop and implement the plan to
create an OPC.
Fundamentals of Organizational
Project Culture (OPC):
•
•
•
•
Project Based Organization Culture -
Organizational Project Culture (OPC)PM Article
Continued on Page 7...
Page 3
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
Pre-Project Preparation
•
•
•
•
•
•
Estimate a rough budget required to
support logistics and food & beverage
purposes and get it approved and in
your account upfront. Later you can
settle the amount when the project
ends.
If there's any integration requirement
during project phase, you can ask
specific team(s) to share standard
connectivity details upfront and keep
the documents with you.
Since all projects start with
requirement clarification sessions,
plan for required number of sessions,
required participants/teams, duration
of sessions, etc. and you can map
with meeting room reservation with
that.
Study background of the client's
business & try to understand their
need of this new system.
Get a copy of RFP/RFI and Business
Case documents and study
thoroughly, especially on benefit &
measurement, terms & conditions,
agreed scope, high-level timeline, ROI
part etc.
If your project has dependency on
any other project(s), then
If the other project already started
then get that project plan, study
and get details of integration
points, key milestones and
understand them clearly and keep
required documents for your
reference.
If the other project hasn't started
•
•
already, talk to prospective PM and
align with your high-level plan,
key integration points and
milestones and share documents
for his/her reference
If it's any telecom related project, you
may want to request for some test
SIMs & handsets upfront.
If you have any configuration
management system, get a
designated space & get your folders
mapped to the server.
In addition, if your project has vendor(s)
involvement, you may want to check for
steps as well
Request admin to prepare visa
invitation letters.
Assign project meeting room OR table
for their sitting arrangement together.
Get temporary access cards.
Talk to IT support team for their
WLAN connectivity OR other VPN
connectivity as required.
Share any request forms (e.g. VPN
connectivity) with vendor up-front so
that they can fill, scan & share.
Ask vendors for their accommodation
arrangement, and suggest any place
nearby to your office premise, it will
save travel time.
If agreement is already in place,
study the agreement carefully for
penalty clauses, payment terms,
SOW, deliverables, SLA, after
implementation support, etc.
Since all projects start with
requirement clarification sessions, ask
vendor upfront on required number of
sessions, required participants/teams,
duration of sessions, etc. and send
meeting requests to participants well
ahead.
Ask vendor for their travel plan, this
will help you schedule critical
milestones.
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Everywhere we learn How to manage
projects, what are the steps to follow,
what are the Dos & DON'Ts, different
methodologies like PMP, Prince2, etc. but
how to prepare for a project before it
starts is something you learn only
through experience. Today, I thought of
sharing my experience on pre-project
preparation from how much I have learnt
so far. And since I manage IT & Telecom
projects my view will focus more on
similar aspects.
So to start with, in general below steps
can be considered before the project
actually starts.
Prepare Job Description of resources
you think you need for the project.
Later, while asking for resources, it
will save your time.
If the agreement with client is already
in place, go through that thoroughly
for critical clauses like payment
terms, payment modalities, major
milestones, SOW, compliance
requirement, penalty clauses, etc. You
will NOT have time during project to
go through it.
You will need to arrange for a good
amount of logistics such as,
Reserve meeting rooms for
upcoming meetings
If required, request admin for a
project table for the team to sit
together
Check for the requirement of
support laptop, projector,
transportation, etc. and talk to
admin upfront and share tentative
timeline upfront
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pre-Project Preparation PM Article
S.M. Parvej Islam, IT Project Manager, Telecom
Continued on Page 7...
Ask vendors for their
accommodation
arrangement, and suggest
any place nearby to your
office premise, it will save
travel time.
4 Page
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
Spotlight
Roughly how many hours per week or per month you spend on volunteering for
PMI activities?
10-12 hours per week.
What motivates you to volunteer for PMI?
Interest to dwell more in the domain and the passion associated with it, has made me
appreciate Project Management more and more with every passing day.
What have been the challenges for volunteering at the Chapter?
Juggling time between work and home priorities. I often try and make up during weekends.
PMI Volunteering, Professional Commitment, Personal Commitment - How do you
balance the three?
It's a mindset that needs to change. Everything else will fall in place.
Name any 1-2 best volunteering experience?
1) PMPC
2) PM Footprints
Tell us your hobbies, or things you are passionate about, other than volunteering
at PMI?
Spending time with family.
What will be your message for your fellow volunteers?
There's lot to learn. Volunteering is like a self development tool. Its interesting and
enjoyable.
What is your thought on preferred recognition for volunteering?
Personally I opine that this should be as per norms of the Chapter. Sometimes it may be ok
to publicly acknowledge contribution.
As an Investment Banking professional, Eswari has
worked in-depth on Securities Market products and wishes
to explore this domain to greater detail with special focus
to sub-ledger systems.
She has spent over 10 years working on projects pertaining to
telecommunications, HR, finance amongst others.
In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering at the PMI Bangalore Chapter.
Learning new aspects of product and project management is a passion. Her strengths lie in
risk and audit management which she aims to pursue further.Eswari Rao, PMP
A. PMaaS – Project
Management as a Service
offers a cost-effective means
of engaging outside expertise
in a service-level model to
achieve significant
improvements in an
organization's project
management effectiveness. It
is a very real alternative to
using recruitment agencies
and system integrators. IT
Project Management needs
skills in technical architecture,
requirements gathering, team
management, leadership,
administration, and
recruitment, to name but a
few. These skills are needed
in different proportions at
different times across the
duration of an IT project. It is
rare that one person can do
all of these roles equally well.
Therefore PMaaS works
significantly as a solution.
[Source - Internet]
Page 5
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
Continuous Integration & ContinuousDelivery using Agile
Continuous Integration & ContinuousDelivery using Agile
- Ranan Bhattacharya
Continuous Integration & Continuous
Delivery practice recommended by the
Agile Software Development Methodology
which has been able to deal with some of
the traditional challenges of development
to help product teams optimize and create
streamlined iterative release management
process that is predictable to a large
extent.
As per my experience Mindset of Minimum
Viability and Right Size Rule facilitates the
process.
Mindset of Minimum Viability – In
Continuous Integration & Continuous
Delivery practice we develop a small but
fully functional feature-set rather than
sweat over an ambitious list of features
that inevitably results in partially functional
and often a buggy release. The key is to
change the mindset of the team. Every
team member needs to understand that
the customer needs a set of completely
working features rather than a big list of
partially functioning ones.
Right Size Rule – "You aren't gonna
need it" (acronym: YAGNI) principle helps
make the change. During product
development the team should question and
challenge the premise of the release so
that we arrive at the 'right size' of the
release that meets the customer's
expectations of the product.
Product watchers have found the typical
user communities use only a part of a
product's feature set. For instance, survey
statistics indicate that 90% of MS Word's
user community uses 10% of this
functionality. Hence it is very important to
develop the right set of functionality and
release to the customer when they need it.
The benefits of this approach are multifold.
• Faster go-to-market
• Smart Product Backlog Management
• Real time response to customer issues
• Customer Delight
What are the benefits?
• Investing in the right areas
• Minimal risk of failure
The Continuous Integration and Delivery
model helps mitigate the risk that comes
with the question “Are we building the
right product?” to a large extent. Since
this methodology is inherently nimble it
enables immediate course correction in
terms of ensuring the right features are
released to customers.
Image – Phases of Agile Development, explains
how proper staging of coding, building, testing
and deployment makes the whole release cycle
more predictable.
Continuous Integration – across sites
and time zones
Continuous Integration is the process of
applying Quality Control along with the
development of any software. The
essential requirement here, for the multi-
function teams – development, testing
and documentation, is that the features
Core Principles of the Practice
are continuously built, tested and
integrated. This process also supports
teams working in multiple geographical
locations and across time zones to
effectively collaborate and delivery fully
functional releases.
• Test as you develop the product
• Automate the Build process
• Build the product on every code commit
• Automating regression testing
Simulate a production-like environment for
daily testing
The key is to continuously integrate
development and testing activities in a
manner that enables software to get tested
incrementally along with the development
so that the issues get detected and fixed at
the earliest.
Continuous Delivery is the technique to
allow the software to be packaged and
released in regular interval without much
manual intervention. The essential
requirement here is to deliver to the
customer who is “remote” in relation to
development teams.
• Delivery Pipeline
• Automated Continuous Deployment
• Automated Acceptance Test
Continuous Delivery – to the remote
customer
Continued on Page 7...
PM Article
Image explains the process flow – Incremental development & testing. Testing should
immediately followed by testing at every step. Test-driven development can be an
option where a developer creates automated unit tests that define code requirements
then immediately writes the code to pass the test case.
6 Page
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
Soumen De, PMP
Soumen De, PMP was invited to present a Keynote lecture at the Predictive Analytic
World (Manufacturing) Conference held at Chicago from Jun17-18.
The topic of the talk was "Mining Big Data for Improving Launch Quality and Customer
Satisfaction" related to automotive industry.
In his talk he presented how the customer (one of the main stakeholders for an
automotive company) expectations are often very different across region and what are
the challenges involved in delivering the 'best' quality for each specific market. With
vehicle features and technologies becoming more standard, how OEM's must
differentiate themselves by improving launch quality performance and understanding
their customer's needs clearly. This session also examined how the automotive big data
analytics can enable competitive advantage by improving launch quality and customer
satisfaction. Conference details are available at
[http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/mfg/2014/agenda_overview.php]
PM Accomplishments
Some Experiences during TrainingSome Experiences during TrainingChakravarthy Rajagopalan
person as well as what works in training
and what does not.
One batch which sat through a 3 month
induction program had already got jobs in
another company. They had probably
used our training period as a platform to
hunt for jobs elsewhere, and got the best
of both worlds (assuming that our world
wasn't as good as the other).
During one session of induction training,
since the trainees knew that their jobs
were assured and that much of the
content of the induction program was
academic they took it lightly and had to
be disciplined like college students.
People only take training seriously if
there are strings attached. There is
usually one individual in a class who
influences the team when they are
offline. Identifying this individual and his
attitude can be critical to the way the
fresher team shapes up. If this 'ring
leader' is creating a negative
attitude about the training, and
the company, the rest of the
group may succumb to peer
pressure.
We understand the
shortcomings of the interview
process when we see the hired
hands during induction training.
It is so difficult to understand a
human being in 30 minutes of
technical interview. But we see
all the questions that we did not
ask during the 30 days of interaction with
the inductees. The quiet but well behaved
one, the quiet but radical one, the
intelligent but wild one, the “I-me-mine”
one, the “will I get a C++ project soon”
one.
Well I am sure people who tried to induct
me felt as frustrated or elated at me and
my peers once upon a time. What goes
round comes around.
As a Software professional I have tried to
conduct induction training sessions.
These are some of the interesting
experiences that I had.
Once I was walking a batch of fresh
engineers through a software life cycle.
One of the tasks was to develop
an online test application.
Halfway through the
development of the application,
one engineer came to me and
said 'Sir, if we complete this
application, we will feel very
complacent and proud. Let us
leave it unfinished'. I suppose
this could be classified as
'negative thinking'. Some people
who lack confidence probably
shoot themselves in the foot to
keep their motivation alive.
As part of the induction program we
encouraged the team to make 'Proof-of-
concepts' for projects that we were
bidding. This meant doing things which
were unconventional and creative. At the
end of the training the same engineer
who wanted to leave the application
incomplete found the POC projects to be
fun and educational. I guess there are
more conclusions we can draw about that
PM Article
Page 7
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
The function concluded with distributions of mementoes to all Footprints
speakers and also the Star Awards to the PMP Quest Faculty.
The Chapter held a Special General thBody meeting of the members on 13 September 2014 at Hotel Woodlands,
Bangalore. The Special meeting discussed and adopted a number of
Amendments to the Chapter By laws. A
large number of Chapter members
participated in the meeting.
This Meeting was
followed by the Annual members meeting
of the chapter where in the yearly balance
sheet and a report on the various activities
of the Chapter was presented.
th On 19 September 2014, The
annual PM Primer event was held at
NIMHANS Convention Centre. Nearly 460
students from 23 Engineering and B schools
participated in the One day conference.
During the conference the students were
introduced to the subject of Project
Management.
th On 27 September a one day work shop on
Agile practices was held at hotel Royal Orchid. An two day advanced program th thon agile practices is being held on 11 and 12 October at hotel Royal Orchid.
This program would enable the participants to take on the Agile certification
test.
Special General Body Members Meet:
Annual Members Meet:
PM Primer:
Agile Foundation Program:
Chapter News ... continued from Page 1Continuous Integration
... continued from Page 5
Project Based ... continued from Page 2
Pre Project Preparation ... continued from Page 3
In today's world customers are not prepared
to wait for long time-frames to receive
features and then find out that the product is
only partially meeting their needs. This has
intensified the challenge for software
development organizations to find ways to
deliver periodic releases as and when the
customers want.
We believe Continuous Integration &
Continuous Delivery practice is gaining more
acceptance in the industry because of its
capacity to enable teams to deliver solutions
of the value, in considerably shorter
timeframes.
Industry studies report that the organizations
take to Agile Methodologies very well in the
engineering phase but almost always follow a
more traditional release plan of doing a few
fixed releases a year. Here again, Continuous
Integration & Continuous Delivery can help
release well tested list of features in a small
bit sized chunks that lead to greater adoption
by customers. There are industry figures that
indicate upward of 80% improvement in
testing and release effectiveness when this
methodology was deployed.
The approach being very much customer
centric ensures that the customer is co-opted
into the development process, and results in
an inherent commitment on the part of the
customer to adopt the product and use it. This
leads to a win-win relationship both for the
customer as well as the vendor developing the
software.
•
•
•
Project team will have greater confidence
towards the corporate team.
Strategically more beneficial and
sustainable for any future projects.
Mutually beneficial for both the project
teams and the corporate team.
By having an OPC, projects tend to be more
successful (in terms of schedule, budget etc.)
also there will be better employee satisfaction
lowering attrition. Customer satisfaction index
would increase there by increasing competitive
advantage in the market. Also it will contribute
to the overall success of the corporate
strategy.
Conclusion:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Get an idea on other deployments of your vendor, if possible you may talk
to 1/2 person from those organizations to have an idea on their system
performance, listened to their implementation expertise and post-
implementation support. Someone must have done all these background
checks before, but you will see, having an understanding will help you
during project execution.
If you are having foreign vendors, get an understanding on their culture &
etiquette, time zone difference, food habit, national holidays, weekends &
working hours.
Get communications and escalation matrix.
If possible, collect phone numbers of critical resources.
If it's any of-the-shelf product, get understanding on the system's standard
features.
You may suggest your vendor on preferred mobile operator in your country
which has good reception in your office.
Mentioned steps are only a handful of steps I can think of, there are many
more nitty-gritties you need to take care of, but having a small checklist of
your own hopefully.
8 Page
Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014
PMI Bangalore India Chapter# 13, Suryastan Apartments, Andree Road, Shanthi Nagar,Bangalore - 560 027, Karnataka, India
[email protected] +91 80 6583 3671, +91 80 2211 5772, +91 98868 14078http://www.pmibangalorechapter.org
ValueWorks; [email protected]
PM Essence
Disclaimer
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project and program management, provide them with practical tools and techniques, and serve as a
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information can be found on the Chapter's website.”
All articles in PM Essence are the views of the authors and not necessarily those of PMI or PMI Bangalore
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The Lighter Side of PM
We like to hear
what you think!!
Please complete the sentence below
with your thoughts in 10-15 words and
send them to
The best entry will win attractive
goodies from PMI Bangalore India
Chapter.
This edition's slogan
Please provide your response by
th29 October 2014
Chapter will select the best slogan and
felicitate the winner during a Chapter
event.
“It is advisable to apply Risk
Management processes in a
project because
......................................... ”
In our last edition, we had asked you to
express your thoughts in 10-15 words to
continue the following sentence
and the best response is . . .
and the Winner is
It is essential for any PM to
manage stakeholders expectation
as/because ....................................
as it helps PM deal with unresolved
issues, manage disagreements and
maximize stakeholder synergy in a
project
Vedamurthy
Mallikarjunaswamy, PMP
PMI Bangalore Chapter announces PMPC 2014 from th nd20 -22 November at Nimhans Convention Centre,
Bangalore.
This year's theme is "Architecting Project
Management for transforming lives". Please mark
your calendar and stay tuned for further announcements
from the Chapter.
Article Contribution
This monthly newsletter is a forum where everyone can contribute through articles on
Project Management and related topics. You can also claim PDUs for your contribution
under category D (Creating new project management knowledge). Additionally it
helps you in improving your writing skills. Use this opportunity and excel in the field of
Project Management.
You can send your Articles or route your queries to
Please note that you do not need to be a PMI or Chapter member to contribute articles
for Essence and participate in monthly slogan competition. All are welcome.