PM I Vorlesung 1

Temporary endeavor -> defined start and end times

Creating a unique product, service or process -> scope

Defined, limited budget

Own organization (temporary) - usually embedded in an organization

A program is a set of interrelated projects and / or programs that are managed in a coordinated manner to deliver results or services that could not be delievered without coordinated management

A portfolio is a set of projects and / or programs and other work that is managed in a coordinated manner to achieve benefits and control in line with strategic business goals

Result of production process or a project

and objective of an enterprise or means of the satisfaction of (customer) needs.

Can be: a tangible good, a service (intangible), or a commodity (e.g. energy services)

A way to add value to customers by facilitating the achievement of customer-desired outcomes.

Customers do not have to take the responsibility for certain costs and risks

(e.g. car maintenance, organizing salary payent, tax declaration etc.)

By three factors: Time, Budget, Scope / Quality

A project is successful, if it is ended “In time, in budget and in scope”

Project Management Best Practices aim at developing the profession of project management and provide best practice process frameworks for project management

Self-contained action sequence for influencing a physical quantity in a technical process

Essential: Return of the current value to the controller, which continuously counteracts a deviation from the setpoint (negative feedback).

Project idea

-> Initiation

-> Planning

-> Execution and Control

-> Completion

Output / Deliverable / Product

Initiation and planning are one stage

Execution and control are seen as separate stages, then “control” often becomes “monitoring”

Completion is often also called “closure”

They ensure an organized start and end of a project or project stage

Create a solid base for the project / stage to be started

Clarify and create a common understanding of the project / stage goals

Determine the management strategies regarding project / stage control, communication, risk, etc.

Create a plan

Take-over results of previous project / stage

On-board Team

Hand-over results

Obtain (final) approvals

Close contracts and accounts (e.g. pay invoices)

Return resources

Adjourn the team

Lessons Learnt (“classical” approach), Review and Retrospective (Scrum) - feedback loop on a larger scale, support continuous improvement

Based on the basic stages the work in a project can be organized…

a) By “technical” stages / waterfall approach

b) By usable product components / an agile approach

c) And by blending / combining these two approaches

“Waterfall Projects” are organized by technical stages and deliver the usable output at the end of the project

Usable Product at the end of the project

Analysis / Requirements Capturing

Desing

Implementation

Testing

Rollout

The VDI guideline for developing and constructing is a flexible (skipping work steps and/or jumping back to previous steps) and iterative approach to understand executable steps and as a recommended course of action

-> Requirement Analysis

-> Design

-> Implementation

-> Test

-> Inspection

-> Takeover / Rollout

These phases are often framed by project initiation

and project completion

For larger projects multiple successions of these phases possible

A project organized based on a waterfall model provides Return of Investment (ROI) at the end of the project

• Usually rather long time from investment to ROI

• Changes are expensive - the later in the course of the project the more expensive

• Response to market change and other uncertainties rather slow and expensive

• Lack of transparency regarding ROI, outcome during the course of the project

• Not very adapted for complex environment (non-deterministic cause and effect relations, high degree of uncertainty)

In traditional projects the project organization is hierarchical

• Hierarchical organization similar to a company organization

• Culture of command and control

• Each level

  • represents the extend of responsiblity

  • defines the lines of reporting

• Dedicated roles for work packages and tasks

• Very often RACI matrix used to define responsibilities of persons and roles in more detail

It can hold the risk of inflexibility

• Lack of transparency about the scope of tasks, the teams’ performance, risks etc.

• Lack of transparency about the project goal and intended outcome

• Lack of motivation and commitment within the work stream team

• Poor quality

• Additional effort caused by on- and off-boarding of team members and hand overs of tasks

• Unsteady work flow

The Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

Lean Management is the reference approach for the Agile Project Management Approaches

Lean Management is a holistic approach of principles, methods, procedures for more effective process design and implementation

Efficient design of the value chain (process) to maximize productivity, product quality and speed

Creating value without waste

-> Value stream analysis, performance measurement systems, involvement of employees

Customer View: Requirements

Company View: Proft, competitiveness

Working in small batches often seems coutnerintuitive, however, in general it increases the productivity and allows the faster identification and response to quality problems

Scrum / Nexus (scaled Scrum)

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework)

Software Kanban

Design Thinking

Lean Startup

DevOps

Framework for organizing and managing work, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, 1995

Framework for enterprise agility, by Dean Leffingwell, in 2011

Method for defining, managing and improving services that deliver knowledge work, by David J. Anderson, 2010

Approach for problem solving and for the development of new ideas, based on creativity techniques developed in the 1950s

Scientific approach to found and manage successful startups, by Eric Ries, 2011

Set of software development practices combining development and operations, by Patrick Debois, Andrew Shafer, 2008

Cynefin is an analytical decision framework and sense-making model supporting the decision of how to work

• Developed by Dave Snowden

• Model of 5 domains that gives advice of how to act in the respective environment

• Agile approaches are designed to function along the boundaries of complex and complicated

The scope and orientation of the project management activities must be defined individually for each project

• Systematically check the individual subject areas and adapt them to specific projects

• Further adjustments may be made during the course of the project (useful input: lessons learnt or retrospectives)

• Documentation in the project manual, if necessary in more detail in other plan documents (quality management plan, configuration management plan)

Prince2Agile provides a tool to assess the suitability of a project and its environment for the usage of agile

Agilometer - shows the areas of risk and of potential benefits when using agile

Lacking constraint

De-coupled

Act-sense-respond

Novel practice

Enabling constraints

Loosely coupled

Probe-sense-respond

Emergent practice

Governing constraints

Tightly coupled

Sense-anlyse-respond

Good practice

Tightly constraint

No degrees of freedom

Sense-categorize-respond

Best practice