Glen Alleman at his Herding Cats blog has posted his presentation on the manner of integrating technical performance measures in a cohesive and logical manner with project schedule and cost measurement. Many in the DoD and A&D-focused project community are aware of the work of many of us in this area (my own paper is posted on the College of Performance Management library page here) but the work of Alleman, Coonce, and Price take these concepts a step further. I wrote an earlier post about the white paper but the presentation demonstrates clearly the flow of logic in constructing not only a model in which technical performance is incorporated into the project plan through measures of effectiveness that are derived from the statement of work, but then makes the connection to measures of progress and measures of performance, clearly outlining the proper integration of the core elements of project planning, execution, and control.
(more…)Latest Blog Posts
Highway to the (Neutral) Zone — Net Neutrality and More on Information Economics
Net Neutrality was very much in the news this week. First, the President came out in favor of Net Neutrality on Monday. Then later in the week the chair of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, who looked like someone caught with his hands in the cookie jar, vacillated on how the agency sees the concept of Net Neutrality. Some members of Congress have taken exception.
(more…)Ace of Base(line) — A New Paper on Building a Credible PMB
Glen Alleman, a leading consultant in program management (who also has a blog that I follow), Tom Coonce of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and Rick Price of Lockheed Martin, have jointly published a new paper in the College of Performance Management’s Measureable News entitled “Building A Credible Performance Measurement Baseline.”
The elements of their proposal for constructing a credible PMB, from my initial reading, are as follows:
(more…)Family Affair — Part III — Private Monopsony, Monopoly, and the Disaccumulation of Capital
It’s always good to be ahead of the power curve. I see that the eminent Paul Krugman had an editorial in the New York Times about the very issues that I’ve dealt with in this blog, his example in this case being Amazon. This is just one of many articles that have been raised about the monopsony power as a result of the Hatchette controversy. In The New Republic Franklin Foer also addresses this issue at length in the article “Amazon Must Be Stopped.” In my last post on this topic I discussed public monopsony, an area in which I have a great deal of expertise. But those of us in the information world that are not Microsoft, Oracle, Google, or one of the other giants also live in the world of private monopsony.
(more…)More on Excel…the contributing factor of poor Project Management apps
Some early comments via e-mails on my post on why Excel is not a PM tool raised the issue that I was being way too hard on IT shops and letting application providers off the hook. The asymmetry was certainly not the intention (at least not consciously).
When approaching an organization seeking process and technology improvement, oftentimes the condition of using Excel is what we in the technology/PM industry conveniently call “workarounds.” Ostensibly these workarounds are temporary measures to address a strategic or intrinsic organizational need that will eventually be addressed by a more cohesive software solution. In all too many cases, however, the workaround turns out to be semi-permanent.
A case in point in basic project management concerns Work Authorizations Documents (WADs) and Baseline Change Requests (BCRs).
(more…)Doctor My Eyes — Excel is Not a Project Management Tool (and neither is PowerPoint)
This is not to disparage the utility of a good spreadsheet to take care of those transient requirements to take a bit of data from the reporting systems and to run some custom algorithms or trends to perform what-if or other one-off analysis. Probably most of us do this occasionally.
What I am referring to is the condition in many organizations in which data that consists of information essential to business operations is kept and analyzed using spreadsheets or other flat delimited storage or text methods. The issue here is the optimum use of information, which the use of Excel and PowerPoint does not achieve. Before anyone thinks that this is a contrarian’s post that is critical of Microsoft products, one need only read the technical advantages of true relational database management systems that are managed by specialized language like MS SQL. Each of these applications and products has their proper place.
(more…)Family Affair — Part II — The Micro and Managerial Economics of Projects under Public Monopsony
In my last post I summarized by the macroeconomic environment in which we operate and delved into some discussion of microeconomic foundations. The response was positive if lukewarm overall, but ego-boosting is not why I started a blog. One of my readers once asked why I don’t take on some hot button issues. Well that’s not my role or area of expertise. I’m not a politician or a social commentator. The community I inhabit has a large impact but is relatively small and mostly consists of engineers, scientists, mathematicians, some policy-makers, thought leaders, and other technically-focused professionals. I’m not trying to stir up emotions. I’m out to stimulate discussion and thought. I’m relieved that I don’t get trolls when posting factual information that goes against popular misconceptions. They are a waste of time.
(more…)Family Affair — Part I — Managerial Economics of Projects, Microeconomic Foundations, and Macro
A little more than a week ago I had an interesting conversation on a number of topics with colleagues in attending the National Defense Industrial Association Integrated Program Management Division (NDIA IPMD). A continuation of one of those discussions ended up in the comments section of my post “Mo’Better Risk–Tournaments and Games of Failure Part II” by Mark Phillips. I think it is worthwhile to read Mark’s comments because within them lie the crux of the discussion that is going on not only in our own community, but in the country as a whole, particularly in the economics profession, that will eventually influence and become public policy.*
(more…)Frame by Frame: Framing Assumptions and Project Success or Failure
When we wake up in the morning we enter the day with a set of assumptions about ourselves, our environment, and the world around us. So too when we undertake projects. I’ve just returned from the latest NDIA IPMD meeting in Washington, D.C. and the most intriguing presentation at the meeting was given by Irv Blickstein regarding a RAND root cause analysis of major program breaches. In short, a major breach in the cost of a program is defined by the Nunn-McCurdy amendment that was first passed in 1982, in which a major defense program breaches its projected baseline cost by more than 15%.
(more…)Driver’s Seat — How Software Normalization Can Drive Process Improvement
Over the past couple of weeks I have taken note of two issues that regularly pop up: the lack of consistency in how compliance is applied by oversight organizations within both industry and within government, especially in cases of government agencies with oversight responsibility in project management; and the lack of consistency in data and information that informs project management systems.
(more…)
Life, Project Management, and Everything 
You must be logged in to post a comment.