Gold Plating.. Dos or Don'ts

I can remember in some of the articles I have read said that Gold plating is something which you should avoid in projects. (This is one of the PMP Exam question too I suppose). .. Whats gold plating ??? No its not painting your accessories in gold color… Its about adding something to the deliveries which is out of the agreed project scope. May be some nice to have or fancy feature you are excited about. .. ..

Why is it so bad?? Coz that addition can create so much of burden and it creates most the project problems at the time of project acceptance.. Believe me I have experienced that. Once when we got to develop a developer guideline., we thought… ah ..Adding a starter kit is really fine to this Then the developers (The customer in this project ) can start the project much more easily..(We PMs love to impress customers : ). Though I knew its called gold plating.. I agreed to have that feature as a value addition.. as it didn’t show much impact to my timelines and budgets. (Smart Idea by my techlead J )..

But proving the theory at last, delivering that addition added more burden to us as it kept on giving some problems with the development environment. But the customer didn’t want to loose it either after seen the thing and highly taken up with the thing..So we had to put some more effort to solve the issues and provide a working starter kit with project deliveries.

But I noticed the following article at http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148954-2/14_common_project_management_mistakes.html

“Fumi Kondo, managing director of NYC-based consultancy Intellilink Solutions, once observed an exchange between a software developer and a project manager where the developer told the project manager that he could add extra features to an application with no additional effort. The project manager told the developer not to add the extra features because users hadn't asked for them. "My response would have been,'Go to the users and see if those features are useful,'" says Kondo. "I see nothing wrong with over-delivering if it doesn't impact the budget or the schedule."

Don’t you think PM is right in this case.. He or she must have seen some risk of adding this additional work out of the scope.. One of my other PM friend explained an incident how a simple “Export to Excel” feature added to his reporting module ( which customer has not asked in the scope ., but they have given the feature as they thought its useful) made so much of trouble to him at the time of project acceptance..

In general Customers are pleased when you do your delivery right.. Adding those extra thingies here and there can really kill the success of your project records.. but you may never know those will have a long time pay back.. However I see the truth of avoiding such gold plating…

I wonder where they are...

I don’t know whether to write this post or not. Whether to publish this in the blog or not. But Its quite sad situation about the Project Management resource problem in SL IT industry...

Lately I started hunting a very good Project manager from the industry. We thought the best way is to recruit somebody through recommendations. So with lots of enthusiasm we sent the message across. Within few days I got about 5 CVs. 2 CVs looked promising and called them for an interview immediately.

First candidate: A guy who has been working as a project manager for company “X” for years. He has been working for the same project over a period and most of his experience was related to handling maintenance work. Never practiced or heard of any PM methodologies but seems he is handling the current scope of work with no much issue. Never got exposed to Development projects and all the projects have been customization projects of 3^rd party product. When I threw few tricky questions about estimates…… I lost all my moral as he didn’t have a clue of project estimates. Always the estimates were done by somebody else and passed to him. Or estimates were never done. He didn’t even know how to defend himself from an unrealistic estimate. Overseas Projects – Never done..OK fine.. “over 7 years of Experience as a Project Manager” The expected salary hit the sealing…

Results –“OUT” -Who cares… Many more to interview and see..

Another– A Guy who has handled projects over 3 years.. Seems very enthusiastic.. Communication - Lot more to improve in order to do a project management role..He has been handling some outdated projects and he has got fed up of his work.. I asked a question..

Me : “How do you time estimate a project when you don’t know the technical side of the development work.. “

Interviewee : (was in deep thinking process… after few min…).” I ask the developers”

Me : Ok fine.. But they will think.. this guy don’t know anything about our work.. we will give him some false estimates and see.. Then what do you do? Do you just pass me the same estimate that you get from them?

Interviewee: NO I always take 80% of an estimate what developers give me.

Me : :-D (thinking….Hern protects the developers)

Results : Out !!!

Ok.. Cant wait anymore.. Called a reputed recruitment Agency.. Got 5 CVs.. All of them with MBAs, many years experience ….Works!! Very promising.. I called all..

1^st one.. Nerd.. No PM experience.. He has handled a team of 5 developers over 6 years.. He is not PM material Period!! He was talking about why SL IT is not moving towards Open source.. I was counting each min I spent.. still I couldn’t end the discussion. Then I told him.. Look., Your profile doesn’t match with the current opportunity I have ., when I have another I will call you.. Then he was telling me that he has a project in hand which he can give to the company if we recruit him.. It was hard for me to send him out…..Finally I said.. I have another meeting…

Next . Currently working as an IT manager.. No experience as a PM.. I don’t know how it was there in the CV. He has got exposed to the AS400 Development and gone overseas as an IT manager.. Not updated with technology or managing projects. He himself accepted the situation.

Next was a guy who is a developer.. Working as a team leader.. Like to move in to Project Management career .. It didn’t take much time for me to realize why he needs to move in to PM from development.. Oh boy he thought the PMs are paid well.. J When I first asked he said his passion is Project Management ., next time when I said we have 2 opportunities 1 is for PM and another is a Senior SE and we pay the same salary for both positions.. He asked me “In that case can I apply as a SSE in this company ..? “ Shew ….

Ok another.. Worked in a Gov Dept. Who handle some projects.. But not fit in to the Private sector Project management.. He told me that he thought the vacancy was for a BA. THANK YOU..

The Next .. Good guy.. Looks good .. Good PR.. good communication ..here we go

Me: Have you experienced any project failures

Interviewee: No I never fail I don’t like to fail

Me: Very good. So let me ask you this question.. Have you had any tight budgets for any projects?

Interviewee: Yes Once I had only 1 Million Budget and my detailed estimate gave me a project cost of 1.5 Million

Me: Interesting.. So what did you do?

Interviewee: Its not a problem to me.. I don’t plan any 8 hour schedules. I always plan 10 – 12 hour schedules. Then we can finish additional work with no cost. I think a developer can work till 11 PM with no issue.. Its an acceptable time for a software developer to work. Always my teams do that with no questions. Therefore I managed to finish the projects within the budgets allocated to me.

Grow up baby !!!

I dont know where those good PMs are gone.. Have they migrated..? Ofcourse few good PMs I knew have already migrated.. I think we are talking about very few PMs who are already working in few companies..

Whats next?.. Calling another recruitment agency…

PS: I thought of adding this line after receiving some comments about this post. This post doesnt mean to say there are no good Project Managers in Sri Lanka. When you look at Software industry, Some of the world's largest project such as huge stock exchange projects, Telco projects are outsourced to Sri Lanka and there are really good PMs managing those projects. What I see is currently there is a big vacuum in the market and this is only the interview experience

Frameworks

Have you ever got involved with documenting your development framework? or architectural framework of a system? I did.. Recently I got involved with a project and the project was all about documenting the development and architectural framework of a specific system.. Thanks to the consultant I worked with for that project, I learned ABC of Microsoft word :-)

Iterations and Iterations of reviews ..finally nice set of documentation came out!..

However I read this article today (sent to me by one of my colleagues ) it discuss why you should write a framework and why not.. Its quite interesting.. You can read the article here..

Why you should write frameworks

http://www.jaisenmathai.com/blog/2008/04/17/why-everyone-should-write-a-framework-and-never-use-it/

Why you shouldn’t write frameworks

http://jeffreypalermo.com/blog/i-ll-get-to-your-application-in-a-minute-first-we-need-to-build-the-framework/

My personal opinion is that spending time and writing a framework is important,

If you are a multinational company (or a company with many IT departments who produce their own applications) and if you need every entity to develop applications on certain terms and standards So that the whole organization can have one standard by standardizing the framework to be used. It assures easy maintenance of each system as anybody who learn the framework can attend to the system and find issues fix etc. with lesser time.

Or if you are producing a product to the market and if you plan many sales of this product and if it needs many people to do the enhancements and maintenance work, its very important that you have a framework written for the project.

Further if you are a Software Development company who develop many applications concurrently also can be benefited out of a framework.

But as far as this second article is concerned I totally agree that you need not to write a framework for a specific application to be delivered to a customer unless its really a deliverable of the project. I think the problem is with the project manager of this project. ( Fire the PM !! :-))) )

Effective Communication on Project Management

Project Management Institute – Colombo Chapter

Member Forum

PMI takes great pleasure in inviting you

for a presentation on

“Effective Communication

on Project Management”

by

Dr. Madhu Fernando

Venue:

Hotel Holiday Inn, Colombo

Persian Room

Date:

Thursday : 26^st June 2008

Time:

5.30pm – 7.30pm

Entrance fee for non PMICC members : Rs.1,000

OOOps .. If you know how much I love this saree

Do you think that Indian women gone mad? or Geeky... :-) ???

This is a pick from my favorite Satya Paul Designer collection.. I love this saree.. Hehe...

Material Looks fabulous.. and the color combination and the finishing looks great too.. Search result is everywhere :-)

Ok.. weeks after Im editing this post today.. Coz I saw the following...
Girls Love Google !!! :-)

'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure'

'A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure'
(Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam at Wharton India Economic forum , Philadelphia , March 22,2008 )
Question: Could you give an example, from your own experience, of how leaders should manage failure?
Kalam: Let me tell you about my experience. In 1973 I became the project director of India 's satellite launch vehicle program, commonly called the SLV-3. Our goal was to put India 's 'Rohini' satellite into orbit by 1980. I was given funds and human resources -- but was told clearly that by 1980 we had to launch the satellite into space. Thousands of people worked together in scientific and technical teams towards that goal.
By 1979 -- I think the month was August -- we thought we were ready. As the project director, I went to the control center for the launch. At four minutes before the satellite launch, the computer began to go through the checklist of items that needed to be checked. One minute later, the computer program put the launch on hold; the display showed that some control components were not in order. My experts -- I had four or five of them with me -- told me not to worry; they had done their calculations and there was enough reserve fuel. So I bypassed the computer, switched to manual mode, and launched the rocket. In the first stage, everything worked fine.. In the second stage, a problem developed. Instead of the satellite going into orbit, the whole rocket system plunged into the Bay of Bengal . It was a big failure.
That day, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization, Prof. Satish Dhawan, had called a press conference. The launch was at 7:00 am , and the press conference -- where journalists from around the world were present -- was at 7:45 am at ISRO's satellite launch range in Sriharikota [in Andhra Pradesh in southern India ]. Prof. Dhawan, the leader of the organization, conducted the press conference himself. He took responsibility for the failure -- he said that the team had worked very hard, but that it needed more technological support. He assured the media that in another year, the team would definitely succeed. Now, I was the project director, and it was my failure, but instead, he took responsibility for the failure as chairman of the organization.
The next year, in July 1980, we tried again to launch the satellite -- and this time we succeeded.. The whole nation was jubilant. Again, there was a press conference. Prof. Dhawan called me aside and told me, 'You conduct the press conference today.'
I learned a very important lesson that day. When failure occurred, the leader of the organization owned that failure. When success came, he gave it to his team.

The best management lesson I have learned did not come to me from reading a book; it came from that experience.

Programmer Competency Matrix

This is a great matrix which you can use to evaluate a development team member., It has taken all the related angles in to consideration., Thanks Pushpaka for sending this to me,

http://www.indiangeek.net/wp-content/uploads/Programmer%20competency%20matrix.htm

Project Managers Forum – PMI chapter Colombo

Oh yeah.. High time to collect some PDUS.. Seems everybody has realized it.. At last PMI chapter SL is trying to conduct some events for Project Managers. A very big “thank you” to them who initiated it.

The Chapter conducted its Forum meeting session on last Friday (14^th March) at Taj. The event was scheduled from 5.30 to 7.30.PM I reached there around 6PM and to my luck it has not been started at 5.30 may be due to heavy rain and bad weather.

I saw Madhu (most of us should be thankful to her for initiating PMI chapter in SL as well as all the good teaching she did when we were doing the 30 hour preparation classes) and I was very happy to see her after long time.. I saw only 2 friends who did PMP with me and seems most of the people either given up on PMP certification or they have already collected enough PDUs and didn’t care to attend to the forum meeting..

But still I can’t be too sure.. I heard that Colombo chapter has had 3 sessions before but this is the very 1^st invitation I have received.. May be they have missed the others... No idea...

Ok back to the session..

One director of the board conducted the starting session with some insight on how to collect PDUs from various Medias. I think that was a good eye opener for most of us who are too lazy to log in to the web site and claim for PDUs.. Now I have I added it to my priority tasks.. Thanks for that..

The main session was the Risk Management lecture conducted by the guest Speaker Mr. Ravi Shankar – CEO of VSNL Lanka (TATA indicom – SL ) . He seems very knowledgeable and experienced....But it was very hard for me to understand his heavy Indian accent.

I made all the effort to follow it seriously and I love the example he made of himself when explaining the fact that “Unawareness makes people more confident of taking risks” J.. He seems very right. However that doesn’t mean that we don’t take risks when we are aware of them.. but the awareness allow us to quantify the risks and have better fall back plans .. In professional life as well as in personal life..He explained it nicely.

He stressed the point that risk management is always an investment.. Which is absolutely important..But unfortunately most the companies (Specially the SME level Software companies) do not think that way.. that may be one reason why this type of companies always falling to hard times. If a company won’t take risk., that will drastically affect the growth of the company, and the company will not grow., but at the same time, if a company takes risky decisions without being well aware of risk situation and without having proper strategies to eliminate them, then again the companies will fall in to major disasters unless the owners have some “lucky starts”.. However he said loud and (clear?).. You should never be successful by chance.. You should be successful by strategy..

Most the other points which he discussed at the session are the normal risk management theories which helped to refresh our memory about what we have learned on Risk Management.

Any way thanks to the chapter for organizing the event.. I’m sure there will be much more participants and some useful discussions for the next sessions..

If any PMI member or any other project manager is interested, the next events are scheduled as follows;

22^nd May

21^st August

20^th November

Have you ever found difficult to manage yor Geeky team?

Here is the answer..

http://positivesharing.com/2006/03/how-not-to-lead-geeks/

What a great article !!!

Top 10 Worst Project Management Excuses..

I found this interesting blog post today..

I think he is spot on..

PMs .. Be aware of.....

Whats new :-)) ???

If you join a new employer to manage an already started project.. Be aware of this situation :-)

Happy 2008

Wish you a wonderful Year ahead with Lots of Happiness and Good health!!!

PM Tool

One of my friends wants to do an Application development project for his masters degree. So I asked him why not develop a proper Project Management tool for the industry with some fancy Project Dashboards etc while maintaining the proper flow of information capturing. So he agreed. This is the first part of the requirement definition which I prepared for him. I will keep on publishing the other parts as soon as I prepare them.

In today’s projectized organizations, managing projects successfully is the key of its financial Success. Middle management and the senior Management of such organizations face major challenges of managing such diversified multiple projects. To address this issue, there are many concepts introduced to the industry such as Project Management Office ( PMO) and Project Governance. The main objective of these concepts are to have proper control on all aspects of Project Management by a central place in order to make proper decisions abut projects on time before it becomes a failure.

Most Industries require Project Management tools, Process and skills. In a country Like Sri Lanka, Software industry finds the requirement very critical as software outsourcing is a key export market which generates significant amount of foreign income to the county.

Software industry has been matured over years and it has identified its own differences in nature of its projects. Mainly there are 2 types of software projects in the current context. Some projects are well defined and well planed from the beginning of the project while others evolved rapidly with major scope changes. Industry has introduced different methods for such Plan driven and agile type of projects over years.

Industry is rich with its Project Management tools such as well known MS Project tools. However most of the tools available cater only to planning and progress monitoring process and those tools does not cover the whole scope of Project Management process in terms of Project Office Perspective.

Industry has requirement for a efficient tool which can support PMO Process to control multiple projects while providing accurate information to all project stakeholders including Project Managers, Customers, Change control Panels, PMO staff , Project Sponsors and all the senior managers.

The Proposed tool should address the project from the time its initiated till the project is closed The Project Management process will flow through 5 main phases such as

Initiation

Planning

Execution
Controlling and Closing. ( Comply with PMI standards)

Each area has set of functionalities to cater to the process and will be interlinked with other phases.

PDU Market

Its just something funny.. I need to collect some PDUs to retain as a PMP for next 3 years. So as usual I turned to google for some help.

How many PMPs are there at the moment…..? I have no idea.. But what I can see is a major market for PDUs.. Is it like buying goodies from the market ? I just wonder..

I came up with many sites which gives some PM literature. There are so many online courses which give you PDUs .. Most sellers start from 5 and it goes up to 35 PDUs . When the enrollment fee is high, the number of PDUs you can claim is also high.. But to be honest.. This is an easy way to collect PDUs for people who wait till the last moment to collect them .. :-)

Win Free PMP Exam resources, Course Material

Here is a great opportunity for PMP candidates.. Project Management Prepcast is a podcast which helps PMP students to sit for the PMP exam with required knowledge and so much confidence .

This podcast has 77 episodes which you can listen to via your iPod/MP3 Player and it consists of 30 hours of training on the PMBOK® Guide and other relevant material.

So I would give my blog readers an amazing opportunity to get all these free. ( How’s that !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:-))))

Its easy ….All you have to do is.. answer the following questions. The first person who answers all the questions right will get a free subscription to this PM podcast which has study material for PMP exam.

The contest is valid till 2 months starting from today. If no candidate could answer all the questions right.. the person who has the maximum right answers will win the contest !

Please use “comments” feature to answer the questions and you need to specify your name and a valid email address with your answers.

Here we go…

Q1. Whats the PMI definition of a “Project”

Q2. If the Optimistic estimate for a task is 6 days and pessimistic is 9 days, Whats the most likely estimate?

Q3. If the Optimistic estimate for a task is 6 days and pessimistic is 9 days, Whats the Standard Deviation of this task?

Q4. In the weekly status update meeting, your Project Manager says Project SV is – 500 What does that mean ?

Q5. Your Project status update records shows CV = - 500. What does that mean ?

Q6. Your Project BAC = 500 USD. Currently AC = 200USD. How much Balance you have in hand for this project to be completed.

Q7. Your current Project Earned Value is 350. Actual cost is 400. Planned value is 350. Whats the CV ?

Q8. If a project team consists of 5 stakeholders , how many communication channels do you need to manage in this project. ?

Q9. What is " Triple Constraints" in Project Management ?

Q10. What’s the Objective of issuing the “Project Charter”

Q 11. Project X has 4 critical paths.. if you are the Project manager of Project X , What is your idea about the project risk ?

Q12. The Estimate for a task is as follows;

O = 5 days, P = 7 days, M = 6 days. Whats the Standard deviation of this task ?

Q13. You are the project manager of Project Y. Name 3 most common causes of conflict on project Y.

Q14. Your Project SPI = .58 What do you think of your project progress compared to the project plan ?

Q15. What is “ Work Package” ?

If you are the Lucky winner .. See what you get.. Can you ask for more... ????

#	Number	Episode Title
--	00.00	Welcome
1	01.01	PMP Exam Overview
2	01.02	PMP Study Tips
3	01.03	The day of the exam
4	01.04	Introduction to Project Management
5	01.05	The PM Processes
6	01.06	The Project Life Cycle
7	01.07	The Role of the Project Manager
8	01.08	Overview of the Knowledge Areas
9	01.09	Code of Ethics & Professional Conduct
10	02.01	Interview with Arlene Trimble
11	02.02	Interview with Duncan McIntyre
12	03.01	Q&A 1
13	03.02	Q&A 2
14	04.00	Project Management Integration Overview
15	04.01	Develop Project Charter
16	04.02	Develop Preliminary Project Scope Statement
17	04.03	Develop Project Management Plan
18	04.04	Direct and Manage Project Execution
19	04.05	Monitor and Control Project Work
20	04.06	Integrated Change Control
21	04.07	Close Project
22	05.00	Project Scope Management Overview
23	05.01	Scope Planning
24	05.02	Scope Definition
25	05.03	Create WBS
26	05.04	Scope Verification
27	05.05	Scope Control
28	06.00	Project Time Management Overview
29	06.01	Activity Definition
30	06.02	Activity Sequencing
31	06.03	Activity Resources Estimating
32	06.04	Activity Duration Estimating
33	06.05	Schedule Development 1
34	06.06	Schedule Development 2
35	06.07	Schedule Control
36	07.00	Project Cost Management Overview
37	07.01	Cost Estimating Inputs
38	07.02	Cost Estimating Tools and Techniques
39	07.03	Cost Estimating Outputs
40	07.04	Cost Budgeting
41	07.05	Cost Control
42	07.06	Earned Value
43	07.07	A Bagful of Cost Terms
44	08.00	Project Quality Management Overview
45	08.01	Quality Planning
46	08.02	Perform Quality Assurance
47	08.03	Perform Quality Control Inputs and Outputs
48	08.04	Perform Quality Control Tools and Techniques
49	09.00	Project Human Resources Management Overview
50	09.01	Human Resource Planning Inputs
51	09.02	Human Resource Planning Tools and Techniques
52	09.03	Human Resource Planning Outputs
53	09.04	Acquire Project Team
54	09.05	Develop Project Team
55	09.06	Manage Project Team
56	09.07	HR Theory 1
57	09.08	HR Theory 2
58	10.00	Project Communications Management Overview
59	10.01	Communications Planning
60	10.02	Information Distribution
61	10.03	Performance Reporting
62	10.04	Manage Stakeholders
63	11.00	Project Risk Management Overview
64	11.01	Risk Management Planning
65	11.02	Risk Identification
66	11.03	Qualitative Risk Analysis
67	11.04	Quantitative Risk Analysis
68	11.05	Risk Response Planning
69	11.06	Risk Monitoring and Control
70	12.00	Project Procurement Management Overview
71	12.01	Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Inputs
72	12.02	Plan Purchases and Acquisitions Tools, Techniques and Outputs
73	12.03	Plan Contracting
74	12.04	Request Seller Responses
75	12.05	Select Sellers
76	12.06	Contract Administration
77	12.07	Contract Closure
--	99.00	Take our Final Exam
--	99.99	Goodbye

Very Easy Questions.. All the best !!

Leadership and gut calls

During last 2months I had most important personal priorities than messing up with corporate jargon so this blog was silent over 2 months. But I think once you get in to deep of any subject you cannot get out of it completely.. So I used my extra time for reading many good books and articles when ever I had a chance.. But unfortunately I couldn’t write any new articles neither blog posts. So Its time to catch-up some stuff now..

Last few days I read the book “ Winning” by Jack Welch. Which has so much valuable reading for any project manager. If you are a PM who needs to improve your leadership skills and soft skills and survive with office politics, that would be the book for you ..

Talking about leaders, the author discuss 8 basic rules of leadership. Out of that the highlighting one was “ Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls."

As Project Managers , most of us face situations to make very unpleasant decisions. I have faced this many times with many teams and stakeholders.. But obviously we think twice.. and some times we have sleepless nights once we make such call due to simple fact that we don’t like to hurt anybody.. We don’t like to hurt anybody’s future.

“ By nature, some people are consensus builders. Some people long to be loved by everyone.

Those behaviors can really get you in the soup if you are a leader, Beacuase no matter where you work or what you do, there are times you have to make hard decisions – Let people go, cut funding to a project or close a project with no completion..”

After all It’s a tough life :-)