Posts Tagged ‘Project Team’
The Winner Is… itensil
As I discussed in our last post, “A Consultant’s PMO”, we are looking for a PMO (Project/Program/Portfolio Management Office, take your pick) tool to form the core tool to help manage the business of the Centivity group. That is a group of independents that function as a single market entity that I’m affiliated with. Based on our selection criteria we have selected the Knowledge Apps™ tool from Itensil.
What we’ll do in today’s post is examine why we made this decision. Clearly, Itensil is not a household name and they certainly aren’t a large company so why would we make this decision. I believe there are some interesting answers.
The first thing to remember is that we are looking for a tool to manage a collection of projects, resources, documents and manage a collection of proposals, including the creation of those proposals. Consultants have to find work before they can do it. When we include the creation and management of proposals into the mix we extend the scope for our tool beyond just a traditional PMO application. We must also have the ability to manage resources and their activities that are not associated with any projects. Also, we have no expectation that one tool will do everything. Our goal is to minimize the portfolio of required software.
First we must decide how to minimize the required software. To do that we have to decide what functionality is needed in each tool. Besides the list of requirements identified in the last post, we need accounting functionality and project scheduling functionality. We need for the selected tool to connect with an accounting package. For the SMB (Small to Midsize Businesses) we chose Intuit QuickBooks for starters. It is not an elaborate tool but will service our needs. Other tools may be used instead of QuickBooks based on client requirements. As for project scheduling, I confess I’m a Microsoft Project bigot. There are many other tools and several are web-based. However, Project has been around for a long time, has many users and is a solid tool for most projects. It may run out of gas for very large projects and it may be overkill for very small projects. It is still a great overall standard for the majority of projects that we’ll run into. It too can be replaced based on client requirements.
For us, workflow is actually fairly significant. We need to standardize our business processes so we’re not reinventing how we do business with every project and proposal. That is a typical problem with small companies. We must position ourselves for an active future. Being able to incorporate automated workflow into our tools is very important, if not essential.
Now let’s focus on the available solutions. Before we start I want to acknowledge that many of you can provide many alternatives to the field of candidates we chose. We make no claims that our process was exhaustive. It did include representation of the major solution types of interest to us, like minimum cost, maximum project management features, strong document management and collaboration capabilities. First up is Google Docs. It is definitely the low cost leader. We are definitely very budget conscious so this was an early leader. However, it runs out of gas on many fronts very quickly. It’s OK for light document management and can provide some project management capabilities but, frankly, won’t build a lot of confidence in our prospective clients. It may be useful to get started but doesn’t meet the client sniff test.
Now let’s consider a Microsoft Exchange/SharePoint solution. This approach is very capable for document management, proposal management and non-automated workflow management. It’s fairly expensive and we’re pretty much on our own for doing the plumbing connections to other apps (obviously we can always hire help). This approach is not intrinsically cloud-based so there are some IT management requirements. We don’t need to worry about those things for a while. It would produce very capable tools but there would be more up front work than we want.
Next is the Project in a box solution. This is very much a document-centric approach with a heavy focus on lean project management. It is not intrinsically cloud-based which, like the Microsoft-centric approach, means more IT management. While having DSDM Atern artifacts built in is a big deal to me, it doesn’t provide a good all around solution. Connecting other apps to it is problematic. The fact that it is supported out of the UK is very inconvenient, not a deal killer but definitely a problem.
Finally, we’ll consider the Itensil Knowledge Apps™ approach. Their Knowledge Apps tool is basically a framework that is, in turn, customized to the customer’s requirements. That customization is remarkably easy and fast. Their basic offer includes a customized Knowledge App to help us get going quickly. They are cloud-based and, therefore, easily accessible by all of our project resources regardless of location. Workflow is built in, as shown in the diagram on the right, which is a huge deal for us. Wiki-based document management is strong, making collaboration on projects and proposals very easy. It can manage proposal creation as a project and supports other forms of collaboration as well. They can he
lp us with connecting the plumbing to other apps as well.
On the downside, they are a small company and there is some risk there. We have made arrangements with them that will mitigate that risk to our satisfaction. On the upside, they are a small company which makes other small companies (like us) a big fish in their pond. That’s a good thing. It offers functionality similar to Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010 in a cloud-based format. That is another good thing.
Overall, we were impressed with the tool. We like what it is now and what it will become. Everyone on our side was excited with what they saw during the demo. Oh yes, and we like the price. It’s one of the more affordable tools which is a big thing to us small companies. I also believe that we have a good relationship with their management. I think they’ll deliver on everything they’ve promised. We’ll keep you posted.
This post has run over my word limit so I’ll stop now. I believe that we’ve made the right decision for our PMO needs. We are looking forward to customizing the Knowledge Apps framework and working with Itensil to grow their product (the big fish in a small pond effect). Let me know if you have any questions.
Stay tuned for more…
A Consultant’s PMO
StrAIT Advisors is a part of the Centivity group. That group is a collection of independent companies which have committed to work together collaboratively, sharing resources and knowledge as one seamless group similar to what I have described in an earlier post. To manage such a group, we need to be able to collaborate, manage projects, manage proposals and share resources effectively in order to compete with larger, established traditional companies.
Essentially, what we need is an extension of a Project Management Office, or PMO, to accommodate everything. To that end, we have been searching for such a tool based on the criteria listed below:
- Supports Agile methodologies
- Web-based application
- Manages proposals like projects
- Resource leveling across multiple projects, possibly many small projects
- Time and Resource accounting
-
Collaboration
- Within project team
- External to project team but within same company
- External to project team
- Within project team
- Integrates with scheduling tool (MS Project)
- Document Wikis developed by sub-teams with sign-offs
- Similar functionality to MS Groove (MS SharePoint Workspace 2010)
- Integrated workflow
These criteria are distilled from several sources, including “Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed” (if they tried harder they could probably come up with a longer title). The image on the left is linked to that book. The experience of our team also played a major role in these specifications. From the book we extracted some common attributes for successful PMOs, listed below:
- Gather and report the initial portfolio information (see Table 14.4 for an example of the initial information required).
- Develop the goals, resource and asset portfolios (described in later chapters).
- Link project, goals, resource and asset portfolios, and perform an initial assessment.
- Determine the organization’s multi-project strategic resource (described in this chapter and in Chapter 17).
- Prioritize the project portfolio according to accepted criteria and the information currently available.
- Assess portfolio balance.
- Develop recommendations for improving ROI.
- Facilitate the Governance Board meeting and communicate the results.
Clearly, these attributes don’t include anything about managing a portfolio of proposals or a pool of project specific resources. There is also no mention of the project or resource accounting needs. However, once these considerations were added we had a reasonably complete set of requirements for our shopping trip for tools to manage our business.
We have neither the time nor the resources for an exhaustive shopping trip. We let the marketplace and our previous experience help us generate our short list. No one tool will address all of our needs so we included ease of integrating our main tool with other specialty tools, like accounting and project scheduling tools. The approaches considered are Google Docs, Microsoft Exchange/SharePoint, Itensil Knowledge Apps and Project in a box.
Google Docs offers a low cost, easily accessible solution to our basic needs. It definitely wins the cost comparison. The Microsoft products are very professional tools with an excellent support ecosystem (very important to a small group like ours) and some mature products. The Itensil Knowledge Apps is a tool from a small, new company that seems to have an intriguing offering and can provide more personalize attention. The Project in a box offering is very affordable and offers built in support for my preferred agile project management methodology, DSDM Atern. Every option has something to say for it, which is why they are on the list. The other tools most likely to be part of the solution are Microsoft Project and Intuit QuickBooks.
I will report on our selection in next week’s post. As always, your comments would be much appreciated. Stay tuned for the results…
A Consulting Ecosystem
I recently attended a dinner meeting addressing, among other things, the future of work. That reminded me of a book that I read a long time ago in which the same thing was discussed. That book is titled “The Future of Work”. An image of that book cover is shown here (click on it to see that book on Amazon.com). I’m not going to attempt to do a book review here. I will address one of the points made in the book and what it means to the consulting business.
In Grantham’s book he describes the “Hollywood Model”. That business model is based on the movie making business in Hollywood where teams of independent, self-supporting specialists group together for a project. At the completion of the project, these teams disband. These specialist entities may be individuals, small organizations, larger organizations or yet another small team of specialists. As this idea evolves we start to envision a network of entities that begin to look like a complex molecule.
Maybe it would be more meaningful to refer to a molecular consulting ecosystem. Just for kicks I did a Google search for “molecular consulting ecosystem” and got no hits. I think I’ll include that phrase in my keywords for this post. Or not. Back to a serious note, the notion of comparing coordinated groups of independent entities for some common purpose to something like a molecule is not a new idea. Actually, if you think about it, we are talking about a fairly structured collection of entities focusing on very specific goals or projects. I think the best analogy is a crystal. Crystals are composed of atoms in a very specific structure. They tend to be stronger and more predictable than more typical organic molecules. They also tend to last a long time. Maybe naming such a business model after a crystalline structure is a good idea.
So what should be done to actually use this idea in a more general purpose consulting environment? Let’s think about a few more details and specific goals of such an arrangement. So what are the basic goals for the group?
- The entities (individuals or small groups) must be knowledgeable.
- The entities (individuals or small groups) must be perceived as knowledgeable by the group’s clients.
- The entities (individuals or small groups) must be safe to do business with.
- The entities (individuals or small groups) must be perceived as safe to do business with by the group’s clients.
- The group must have a means of generating new opportunities.
- The group must have a means of presenting a unified presence to the marketplace.
- The group must have an accepted means of distributing revenue among the entities.
- The group must have an accepted means of distributing operating costs among the entities.
- The group must have an accepted means of distributing liability among the entities or centralizing it as appropriate.
- The group must have an accepted means of recruiting and vetting new entities.
- The group must have an accepted means of allocating rights and access to any intellectual property generated by the group during an engagement and not the exclusive property of the client.
- The group must have access to systems to support collaboration among the entities for skills exchange and training.
- The group must not be constrained by national boundaries.
- The group must have access to systems to allow the collaboration on work product documents and proposals.
- The group must be able to scale to perform various sizes of engagements.
- The group must be able to include external entities as necessary for specific engagements.
- The group must be able to include clients as appropriate.
Basically, the group must be able to function very much like a company but maintain the ability to expand and contract as needed. It strikes me that what the group needs is an infrastructure that looks much like a PMO, or Project Management Office. That PMO must have some of the attributes of a business and not just a department within a larger organization. Going back to our crystal analogy, there must be a seed crystal around which other crystals form or connect. That seed crystal becomes the key to making everything else stable and effective. The seed crystal contains the PMO.
Maybe I’ll just call this the “Crystal Consulting Model”. Google doesn’t have anything for that phrase either. Anyway, consider this a part of an upcoming series of posts. I don’t know how many or when they will appear but this topic is important to our business so defining it more clearly is very important to us.
Thanks for stopping by. Any comments would be much appreciated. See you next time…
Wrapping Up Timeboxes
In my last post I addressed our decision to use DSDM Atern for the projects generated by an SLR engagement. Now comes the decision on what I call the “engagement architecture”. What this phrase means is what are the tools we will use and how will we use them to actually execute projects. No one tool does everything needed to execute projects in an environment of empowered, collaborative teams executing an iterative methodology. Trust me, I’ve extensively looked for the “silver bullet” application that does it all and could only find several lead bullets and a couple of bronze ones.
We need to remember that we’re also talking about doing projects as consultants working with both our resources and the client’s. That means that the chosen approach must have negligible impact to the client’s IT infrastructure and not commit the client to additional long term recurring costs. When we leave the engagement, we must be able to fold up our tent and take our working environment with us. That certainly isn’t always true but our planning must be based on the most conservative scenarios. The only materials that must be left behind are sufficient documents to support SOX requirements and audits. For any client, the answer is one of three modes.
Mode 1 (primary)
The primary collaborative environment is Microsoft Groove 2007 (soon to be Microsoft SharePoint Workspace 2010). In this mode the client provides a copy of Groove to each team member. Groove functions primarily in a peer to peer architecture but has a server-based architecture available when/if needed. For small teams peer to peer is appropriate and convenient. That approach can definitely scale to larger sizes but at some point a server option may be more appropriate. I know many readers will start to groan at the mention of peer to peer. I have discussed the value of this approach before. A link to that post is here. It fulfills the requirement of leaving no lasting footprint on the client’s IT infrastructure (only user PCs), does not inflict a recurring cost on their business (there is a minimal onetime cost) and definitely provides a flexible collaborative environment for the project team. I will not elaborate on how Groove is used because I don’t want this post to turn into a pitch (it’s already more pitchy than I would like).
The brainstorming and creative component uses MindManager from Mindjet. I have found it to be very useful and its integration to Microsoft’s Office Suite is very beneficial. The use of the Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) is assumed. For project schedule management we use the venerable Microsoft Project tool. For the methodology and document control we use Project in a box. We use the client’s storage/portal for archiving project information or we can archive it on our own SharePoint server. The use of all of these tools can be adjusted based on the client’s preferences or the client can just use our default engagement architecture.
Mode 2 (cloud)
Here the primary collaborative environment is one of several cloud-based project management tools. There is a wide assortment of them available and we have a few preferences. But the client’s preferences are what count so we’ll review the options with them and go from there. The reason this is not our primary approach is that I’m not satisfied that all the security “rude surprises” are all know yet for that approach (see this link) and it can inflict a recurring cost on the client. However, it’s all the rage now, very popular and growing. It will mature in time to address all of my concerns. We acknowledge that and will be happy to not fuss too much with the client about it if that’s what they want. The bottom line is that it can work for this requirement.
Mode 3 (whatever)
This is simply the case when the client is a larger, more IT-mature organization and wants to do it their way. If this is their preference we say “yes, sir”, salute and do it their way. This is true of any consultant in the world. We will do the best to adapt the core parts of our approach to that environment to assure of project success. We won’t let the client shoot themselves in the foot (or at least not contribute to it) but we will be adaptable.
In conclusion
We’ve covered a number of tools at a very high level. Each of you has to find the combination that works for you. I believe these approaches work for us and our clients to deliver professional and successful results for each project. If anyone from the DSDM Consortium reads this please harass the Project in a box people to expand their tool from just a document repository to include some of the functionality described above. If anyone from Project in a box reads this please consider yourself harassed.
Thanks for stopping by. See you next time…
Why DSDM Atern?
I have been deep in the methodology evaluation business as of late. Our current methodology is our own SLR methodology. It is intended to be used to assess the client’s business processes, specify changes that are needed and map the client’s IT architecture to their revised business processes. Even though it is partly based on the RUP methodology the iterative nature of RUP was replaced with the notion of layers, i.e., first get the most out of what the client already has, then, if needed, shop for commercial software to fill in the holes and finally to develop custom code to fill in any needs that cannot be addressed by the first two “layers”. We also look at outsourcing as an alternate approach. Therefore, SLR will generate some number of software related projects that have to be managed together.
Until recently, the preferred approach for project management of those resulting smaller projects has been a traditional “waterfall” approach as described here. That approach is fairly rigid and top-heavy but does work well for non-IT centric projects. However, since we intend to deliver work in a lean and fast manner, we needed to pick an additional project management approach that is more aligned with the rest of our business. That led to a shopping trip.
There are many available techniques. We needed to stick to options which have broad acceptance. That narrows down the list to Prince2 (UK) and PMBOK (US) for “waterfall” approaches. Scrum (US) and DSDM (UK) for leaner “agile” project management. The newest version of the DSDM methodology is called Atern. All of these options have proven track records and would be safe approaches. However, we already have a waterfall approach so our focus was just on the lean approaches. It’s important to remember the environment in which we will be working. We will be using this approach with teams made up of the client’s resources, our resources, possibly vendor and/or client business partner resources. The projects will probably have a strong software focus but some may not. We have to handle both. Most projects will probably not be developing custom software but some will. We have to handle both of these types as well.
While both Scrum and DSDM Atern will handle our software development needs, Atern will handle the non-software development projects much more easily and be more at home in more “corporate” environments. When I say corporate environments I mean any client environment where the delegation of significant business decisions to empowered teams is a challenge for the client’s leadership. That’s especially true if the team contains significant external resources, like consultants. Atern is a little more prescriptive in nature. There is a little more structure and definition than Scrum. It’s a little easier to formalize change control with Atern. These things are important if the methodology is to be acceptable to client leadership whose neck is on the line for the project’s success. I know how that feels first hand and it’s a big part of our decision process.
Both Scrum and Atern can be compared to more traditional techniques by the diagram below. Essentially what that diagram is saying is with traditional techniques, if you get into a bind with the schedule you can add resources or give the project more time. In the lean approaches, if you get into a bind with the schedule you decide which deliverables, i.e., features or capabilities, that 
can be delayed to a future release or version of the project’s products. That works in a software centric project but not so much if you’re building a bridge or building.
Scrum is best suited for software companies which have their own dedicated teams of experienced developers that just do software development for a living. It is very focused on that development environment and is much harder to tweak to fit our needs. However, one dilemma is that Scrum knowledgeable resources and training are much easier to find in the US. DSDM Atern is established in the UK and many other countries but it’s almost unknown here. Fortunately, with the pervasive nature of the Internet that’s not the problem it used to be. It’s still a risk but a small, acceptable one.
Atern will be fully embedded in our SLR approach shortly. We believe this addition will add value to our client’s and their projects. Atern is designed to work with the waterfall methodologies so we will continue to use the more traditional approaches where they make sense. If anyone has contacts at the DSDM Consortium, let them know that they need to establish more of a North American presence. They just need to follow the path that ITIL (also from the UK) has taken.
Thanks for stopping by. I hope this post was valuable for you. See you next time…