Progression towards Project Management...

[Peter Loew]

Not needed as a rule, but can be very useful periodically to make sure a developer is not spending his coding time on his plan B rather than getting his actual work done. The secret for getting this data without having to know about code itself is to use Visual Studio Team System and run a code-churn report. It can be a real shocker to learn that a developer spent 4 days looking busy and only having changed one line of code (which was a comment rather than actual code).

This can indicate several things.. He may be distracted with personal issues on his mind, may be procrastinating, may be preparing to walk, may not have a clear understanding of what he needs to be doing, may be burned-out.

Say hello to Project Assurance; something that I find less and less of these days. As an example, we have a Back Office here at my current client's offices, and as part of a project I am delivering we needed to order some hardware kit to build a test rig.

The BO produced a hardware spec of what we needed and the kit was so highly spec'ed you could have run the entire customer network on it. And what happened? Without bothering to run it by the PM or by the BO management as procedure says they should, they went straight to the Procurement Dept. and ordered the kit which the customer paid for.

A few days later it arrived and after building it up they realised it didn't work on the version of ESX they needed it for. So they are stuffed because they broke procedure, and because there was no technical assurance in place, despite me time and time again raising this issue with my senior management. I can now sit my director down in a room and say 'I told you so'.

[original PM]

It is difficult not to get hung up on metrics if you have people trying to hang you up on non delivery of certain items.

although experience has taught me that some people will always try to screw you to the ground in one area or other if they just want rid of you

(say if they want to give their mate your job or something!)

[beercohol]

Say hello to Project Assurance; something that I find less and less of these days. As an example, we have a Back Office here at my current client's offices, and as part of a project I am delivering we needed to order some hardware kit to build a test rig.

The BO produced a hardware spec of what we needed and the kit was so highly spec'ed you could have run the entire customer network on it. And what happened? Without bothering to run it by the PM or by the BO management as procedure says they should, they went straight to the Procurement Dept. and ordered the kit which the customer paid for.

A few days later it arrived and after building it up they realised it didn't work on the version of ESX they needed it for. So they are stuffed because they broke procedure, and because there was no technical assurance in place, despite me time and time again raising this issue with my senior management. I can now sit my director down in a room and say 'I told you so'.

ooh!! That's a stinker.

Although Project Assurance is more of an audit role. More reactive than proactive. But remember who is responsible for PA, even though they may delegate it to others! If the senior management person is also on the project board, then its HIS responsibility (well in strict Prince2 at least).

Even more a satisfying "told you so", I hope.

[Peter Loew]

ooh!! That's a stinker.

Although Project Assurance is more of an audit role. More reactive than proactive. But remember who is responsible for PA, even though they may delegate it to others! If the senior management person is also on the project board, then its HIS responsibility (well in strict Prince2 at least).

Even more a satisfying "told you so", I hope.

Oh yes, I and the projects team are completely covered; documented and all.

I'm currently working with another senior PM to produce PRINCE2 processes for our particular customer environment and ensure they are adhered to as much as possible.

[beercohol]

Oh yes, I and the projects team are completely covered; documented and all.

I'm currently working with another senior PM to produce PRINCE2 processes for our particular customer environment and ensure they are adhered to as much as possible.

Aha! Good. Nothing like a paper-trail of exoneration!

Re Prince2 adoption.. How are you finding that? I did a similar thing for my last client to get their UK projects into the Prince2 framework instead of the HQ mandated PMP. We ended up going for a Sharepoint portal site for the PMO as organisation-wide guidance and templates etc.

[original PM]

Is Prince 2 worthwhile?

People I have spoken to say it will produce loads of documentation explaining why the project has not worked but does not guarantee results

aparently this is fine in public sector but private sector is more interested in results than documents....

and if not Prince 2 what?

[Peter Loew]

Aha! Good. Nothing like a paper-trail of exoneration!

Re Prince2 adoption.. How are you finding that? I did a similar thing for my last client to get their UK projects into the Prince2 framework instead of the HQ mandated PMP. We ended up going for a Sharepoint portal site for the PMO as organisation-wide guidance and templates etc.

To communicate PRINCE2 adoption to senior management and educate project teams, we are outlining everything in Mind Manager, a very good mind mapping tool that also integrates with Office.

There is an existing EDRMS system we can use for our PCOs / PMO to access project documentation so we will probably go with that. Sharepoint 2007 is coming as part of a larger business transformation programme otherwise this would have been the platform of choice.

How did your client take to PRINCE2 over PMP methods?

[beercohol]

Is Prince 2 worthwhile?

People I have spoken to say it will produce loads of documentation explaining why the project has not worked but does not guarantee results

aparently this is fine in public sector but private sector is more interested in results than documents....

and if not Prince 2 what?

Excellent question, and one often fired at Prince2.

The real power of Prince2, after having learned all those processes, components, techniques and document templates (all the stuff that makes it look top-heavy) is the scaleability guidance.

Of course, Prince2 is a big subject, it is designed to scale up to very large projects. On real life projects however, the trick is to scale it down to small projects so that the documentation requirement doesn't drown the actual work to be done. Prince2 has extensive guidance on how to do this.

This must be the single most villified (and least understood) aspect of Prince2 and I think this stems from two things:

1. Public Sector projects that fail spectacularly get plenty of media attention,

and

2. Prince2 Scaleability guidance is not covered at all in the Foundation Exam (giving stakeholders a wrong impression), and only minimally in for Practitioner (so even the newby PM hits the market all-fired up for a document frenzy).

[beercohol]

To communicate PRINCE2 adoption to senior management and educate project teams, we are outlining everything in Mind Manager, a very good mind mapping tool that also integrates with Office.

There is an existing EDRMS system we can use for our PCOs / PMO to access project documentation so we will probably go with that. Sharepoint 2007 is coming as part of a larger business transformation programme otherwise this would have been the platform of choice.

How did your client take to PRINCE2 over PMP methods?

Quite well in fact. Although there are some interesting differences:

- Prince has Processes and Stages, PMP combines these into Phases.

- A Prince2 project remains viable according to a revisited business case. Whereas a PMP project stays live until the Customer says otherwise (honestly!)

- PMP prescribes an approach to planning that dives straight into activities (WBS), whereas Prince2 takes a more pragmatic PBP approach first.

- PMP includes EVM, Prince2 briefly mentions it, but doesn't describe or prescribe it.

...to cover some of the highlights that jump to mind.

Overall I think PMP is a respectful study of project management based on observational work of project managers in action. It recognises that PM exists and has done for thousands of years etc. and is a collection of guidance based on what techniques are proven to work. In that sense, its more commercially aware. Things like, the project being viable as long as the customer says so. I mean this is real-life.

Prince2 seems more academic in comparison. Perhaps its a British thing, but it seems to suggest along the lines of - Whether or not Project Management existed before Prince2, we don't care. Starting from now, this is how it ought to be done.

A slighltly less commercially aware approach imho - A Prince2 project remains viable as long as its business case is viable. Thats a nice idealistic view, but in real life, the paying customer is still the actual decision maker.

Other than picky stuff like that which amuse PMI professionals, Prince2 was very warmly welcomed. I think there's a similar reception for ITIL in the US as well. They think we are clever as well as evil!

[techno]

great discussion

I think this is one of the most interesting discussions I have read on CUK - keep it up chaps!

I would not class myself as a PM even though I have all the business and people skills (I am way to technical; just love the coding) . All the projects I have ran have been small private software companies, real "seat of you pants" stuff.