earned value management

The Need for an Integrated Digital Environment (IDE) Strategy in Project Management*

Putting the Pieces Together

To be an effective project manager, one must possess a number of skills in order to successfully guide the project to completion. This includes having a working knowledge of the information coming from multiple sources and the ability to make sense of that information in a cohesive manner. This is so that, when brought together, it provides an accurate picture of where the project has been, where it is in its present state, and what actions must be taken to keep it (or bring it back) on track.

(more…)

Shake it Out – Embracing the Future in Program Management – Part One: Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

I heard the song from which I derived the title to this post sung by Florence and the Machine and was inspired to sit down and write about what I see as the future in program management.

Thus, my blogging radio silence has ended as I begin to process and share my observations and essential achievements over the last couple of years.

My company—the conduit that provides the insights I share here—is SNA Software LLC. We are a small, veteran-owned company and we specialize in data capture, transformation, contextualization and visualization. We do it in a way that removes significant effort in these processes, ensures reliability and trust, to incorporate off-the-shelf functionality that provides insight, and empowers the user by leveraging the power of open systems, especially in program and project management.

Program and Project Management in the Public Interest

There are two aspects to the business world that we inhabit: commercial and government; both, however, usually relate to some aspect of the public interest, which is our forte.

There are also two concepts about this subject to unpack.

(more…)

Take Me to the River, Part 1, Cost Elements – A Digital Inventory of Integrated Program Management Elements

In a previous post I recommended a venue focused on program managers to define what constitutes integrated program management. Since that time I have been engaged with thought leaders and influencers in both government and industry, many of whom came to a similar conclusion independently, agree in this proposition and who are working to bring it about.

My own interest in this discussion is from the perspective of maximization of the information ecosystem that underlies and describes the systems known as projects and programs. But what do I mean by this? This is more than a gratuitous question, because oftentimes the information essential to defining project and program performance and behavior are intermixed, and therefore diluted and obfuscated, by confusion with those of the overall enterprise.

Project vs. Program

(more…)

Ground Control from Major Tom — Breaking Radio Silence: New Perspectives on Project Management

Since I began this blog I have used it as a means of testing out and sharing ideas about project management, information systems, as well to cover occasional thoughts about music, the arts, and the meaning of wisdom.

(more…)

Technical Foul — It’s Time for TPI in EVM

For more than 40 years the discipline of earned value management (EVM) has gone through a number of changes in its descriptions, governance, and procedures.  During that same time its community has been resistant to improvements in its methodology or to changes that extend its value when taking into account other methods that either augment its usefulness, or that potentially provide more utility in the area of performance management.  This has been especially the case where it is suggested that EVM is just one of many methodologies that contribute to this assessment under a more holistic approach.

(more…)

River Deep, Mountain High — A Matrix of Project Data

Been attending conferences and meetings of late and came upon a discussion of the means of reducing data streams while leveraging Moore’s Law to provide more, better data.  During a discussion with colleagues over lunch they asked if asking for more detailed data would provide greater insight.  This led to a discussion of the qualitative differences in data depending on what information is being sought.  My response to more detailed data was to respond: “well there has to be a pony in there somewhere.”  This was greeted by laughter, but then I finished the point: more detailed data doesn’t necessarily yield greater insight (though it could and only actually looking at it will tell you that, particularly in applying the principle of KDD).  But more detailed data that is based on a hierarchical structure will, at the least, provide greater reliability and pinpoint areas of intersection to detect areas of risk manifestation that is otherwise averaged out–and therefore hidden–at the summary levels.

(more…)

The Song Remains the Same (But the Paradigm Is Shifting) — Data Driven Assessment and Better Software in Project Management

Probably the biggest DoD-centric project management news this past week was the unofficial announcement by Frank Kendall, who is the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics USD(AT&L), that thresholds would be raised for mandatory detailed surveillance of programs to $100M from the present requirement of $20M.  While earned value management implementation and reporting will still be required on programs based on dollar value, risk, and other key factors, especially the $20M threshold for R&D-type projects, the raising of the threshold for mandatory surveillance reviews was seen as good news all around for reducing some regulatory burden.  The big proviso in this announcement, however, was that it is to go into effect later this summer and that, if the data in reporting submissions show inconsistencies and other anomalies that call into question the validity of performance management data, then all bets are off and the surveillance regime is once again imposed, though by exception.

(more…)

No Bucks, No Buck Rogers — Project Work Authorizations, Change Control, and Cash Flow

As I’ve written here most recently, the most significant proposal coming out of the Integrated Program Management Conference (IPMC) this year was the comprehensive manner of integrating all essential elements of a project, presented by Glen Alleman et al.  In their presentation, Alleman, Coonce, and Price, present a process flow (which, in my estimation, should be mirrored in data and information flow) in which program artifacts were imbued with measures of effectiveness, measures of performance, and measures of progress, to achieve an organic integration of all parts of the project that allow the project team to make a valid assessment of achievement against the plan, informed by risk and opportunity.  (Emphasis my own).  The three-legged stool of cost, schedule, and technical performance are thereby integrated properly at the appropriate level of the project structure, and done in such a way as to overcome the rigidity and fallacy of the single point estimate.

(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…)

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…)