Comments for A PM's workshop

Comment on Prince2 templates – PBS – Calibrating tools by Malcolm West

Malcolm West — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:15:10 +0000

Eugenio, cool blog loads of good stuff here. BTW when I as checking our web stats we are getting an occasional 404 error on links coming from your site, I think you have a link to community edition which isn’t right, looks like too many full stops like this: http://www.projectinabox.org.uk/community.asp.

Thanks again for telling people about CE though and I hope you have been using it yourself… it would be great if you wanted to do a review and we would link to it from our site.

Thanks

Malc

Comment on Benefits Review Plan 1.0.0 by Better Projects » Blog Archive » Back to benefits

Better Projects » Blog Archive » Back to benefits — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:18:29 +0000

[...] Although from business point-of-view, I can recommend Eugenio Magnone’s material on Benefit Review Plans to set alonside earlier material in my [...]

Comment on Managing the “weekly” (highlight) report by Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:52:37 +0000

We’ve learned through hard won experience that traditional status reports follow the example here.
“Deliverables Based Planning(sm)” is our approach to planning and management of proejcts. The Plan of the Week and the Plan of the Month are the basis of the measure of Physical Percent Complete.

When you define the physical tangible outcomes for the “close of business” (COB) for the week, the status report becomes a report on “what did you do this week, that you said you were going to do?”

For uncompleted – but promised – deliverables on a weekly basis, these are moved to a future period. This action mortgages the future with partially completed commitments.

This is the purpose of the deliverables view of the project rather than one that is “effort.”

In the end the guiding phrase is “never confuse effort with results.” The traditional status report describes the “effort” performed during the week. With a deliverables only plan and related status, the effort is a secondary status (cost) and the 100% completion of the planned deliverables speaks for the progress by itself.

Comment on Rules and apples by Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:34:41 +0000

Almost every error can be recovered. And those that can’t are tuition for the next experiences.
Read “How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientist, Engineers, and Project Team,” Charles J. Pellerin, John Wiley & Sons. Pellerin is the Program Manager that sent the Hubble to orbit with a bad mirror. He has someting to say about managing teams in the presence of “screw ups.”

Comment on BUFD, NUFD and RUFD by Eugenio

Eugenio — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:05:27 +0000

I am feeling like a “dwarf on the shoulders of giants”.
Thanks, best

Comment on BUFD, NUFD and RUFD by Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:17:33 +0000

The No Design at All paragraph is brilliant.

Comment on Risk and history by Glen B. Alleman

Glen B. Alleman — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:55:30 +0000

Eugenio,

“Any reasonable attempt for measuring risks is based on history,” is not exactly the case.
Take a look at http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/praguide.pdf to see how risk models are built in the absence of past performance.

Comment on Contingencies & Risks by Eugenio

Eugenio — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:39:31 +0000

Dear Glen,
Susan does a good job as it is limited to small projects. The danger would be in the self-satisfaction, when luck is mistaken as ability.
My post was focused on two aspects:
1) The importance of a Risk Management framework
2) How to improve the awareness that hard working with the weak or wrong concepts.

In the US DoD (8.2) the “contingency” plan should be placed between:
Risk Mitigation Planning
Risk Mitigation Implementation

I am working on the US DoD for both for professional reasons and preparing further exams.

Thanks for your comments,
Best regards
Eugenio

Comment on Contingencies & Risks by Glen B Alleman

Glen B Alleman — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:26:03 +0000

Eugenio,

Here’s my comments
The core problem is Susan does not have a risk management framework from which to launch her solutions. Pick one – PMBOK is OK, maybe a C+, OGC has a nice one in the UK, even Prince 2 has good risk management processes. My favorite of course is the US DoD Risk Management Guidebook.

But Susan has an approach that is not consistent with language and processes. A contingency plan is what? The plan when the risk appears? Many of her risks are actually issues. There are specific responses – risk handling – Ignore, Transfer, Control, Assumption.

The Software Engineering Institute’s Continuous Risk Management process is another A+ approach. But Susan missed the core processes of risk management.

Planning
Assessment
Identification
Analysis
Handling
Monitoring
Documentaton

No context in which place this contingency. No wonder the business leaders are confused.

Comment on What “done” can be defined. by Eugenio

Eugenio — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 07:36:15 +0000

Thanks. “It is a long way to Tripperary”, as Snoopy said.
Eugenio