Ten cautions in case of a self sponsored project

What if you have chosen to develop a product for which you don’t have a customer right now? If you perceive that by the time you complete development phase and the product will be ready to launch if will not be obsolete as per technology or concept, go ahead but take care of following cautions to be a winner in the game:

10. Technology: Ensure that you are starting with the latest technology, as even the latest technology will be a little older by the time you complete the product.

9. Concept: Ensure that you do not start building a product that has several variants already in the market. Beat the drum to give the world a new beat.

8. Keep the air in your bag: Let the concept not leak out until you are ready to launch the product. Launch it with a bang. Advertise, blog, press conference, and whatever you feel appropriate for the launch. But ensure that your team confide in you in this exercise till you are ready to shout.

7. Convince, build trust: Convince yourself that you have chosen a right path even if it is risky. Demonstrate your management about your idea and the way you want to design/ launch it. Build trust among your team in giving a real shape to your dream.

6. Risk Management: It is very essential to jot down the risks involved, and ways to mitigate them depending on their severity.

5. Incentive: Let your team know what incentive they are going to get once the product and project is successful.

4. Project Sponsor: Mostly in such type of projects your management will sponsor the project, so all risk lies inside the house. Your stake is quite high in such projects. Equally important is the success of such projects.

3. Project Methodology: Adopt the right methodology and adhere to its requirements.

2. Project Plan: Ensure that such projects cannot tolerate much deviation in terms of time or money. Since in such projects all risk is yours, don’t let it increase at any cost.

1. Definition of successful project: Building a beautiful product in this case is of not any use if there is no buyer at the time of launch. Your total investment in the project can return only if you are able to find out a buyer.

Project Plans having no Place for ‘Documentation Process’ Compromise with the Quality

If we have to compromise with the quality of project at various stages there are many ways to do that. Most stupid way will be to compromise with the quality of the software which in any case is going to create lot of hue and cry in the organization either prior to it goes to customer during internal testing, or when it goes to customer for implementation. The undercover holes covered howsoever smartly will create seepage sooner or later.

Most common mistake that is made during the complete lifecycle of a project is not formally giving documentation (required at various stages) in project plan by assuming that documentation is not that prime. It is presumed that either the documentation will be done at the end or it is taken too casually and told to be done by everyone without assigning a proper ownership.

Both – Quality of Software and Quality of Documentation play a lead role in project management. Compromising with any of the two leads to increased cost, loss of customer satisfaction, delay in implementation or revenue loss.

Project Scope – Customer needs to be shown the right path

One of the project managers of an ERP implementation company got himself into a tight corner. He found himself in a tough situation where an already ‘mutually sealed’ project scope asked for one or two new requirements (or changes in the existing functionality) from the client everyday while implementation. The broadly agreed upon requirements within the earmarked project modules came out with some changes here and there, some new add-ons. Customer is not ready to accept ‘no’ to any of the requirement since they have a mindset that they have ordered for a big project and are investing a large amount of money in it. The customer keeps on pushing for all their ‘now invented’ requirements to be mapped in the existing ‘project scope’. This seems to be a never ending story. The project manager is tightlipped to start a new module since the running one is not ‘done’ so far. And he also can’t say NO and mark any requirement as ‘out of scope’ since he does not want to annoy the customer and wants the project to be a success.

What should be done in this sort of scenario?

The project manager privately updated me about the situation and asked for my help to get him out of this situation. I told him if he carries out in the way he is – he will never be able to finish his project.

I advised him to have an emergency meeting with his client and share his pain with them. Make them clear that you are not saying No to their requirements but there is a need of a boundary line drawn with mutual understanding. Cater to so far documented requirements as phase I. Finish it off. Get it signed off. Whatever new requirement or changes come from the customer – document it, analyze it. Any requirement that is asking for more than 4 hours of efforts, put it in phase II of the project. As soon as you finish off the phase I, finish off Phase II, sign off. And so on.

Eighteen commandants for Project Management Meetings

18. All meetings related to the project must be fruitful for its continuous progress and timely actions.
17. Duration of the meetings should be optimum to cover all major concerns and immediate actions required.
16. Meetings should bring all participants close to break the barrier between them.
15. Don’t hesitate to have one-to-one talk where important.
14. Have lively discussions.
13. Have concrete progress.
12. Explain after taking time the points that require proper knowledge to be brought to all the members.
11. Propose your views and action points.
10. Stress on your viewpoints where you feel the importance need to be expressed to the members.
9. Commit full co-operation
8. Understand every member’s viewpoints
7. Participate in complete
6. Focus on each member and their suggestions
5. Strip away the mental wall separating the members
4. Strengthen the mutual cooperative relationship towards the common goal
3. Give sincere response to the issues
2. Restore trust
1. Make it overall a meaningful meeting

Five ‘must-have’ skills to be a Business Analyst

As stated in my previous post, a Business Analyst is a quite powerful role that establishes the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer. Let us see what are the ‘must-have’ skills without which a business analyst can not survive? And why are those skills so important to be a business analyst? Without any relevance to the order in which they are mentioned (as all are equally important) these skills are:

5. Business Knowledge: A good amount of experience/ exposure/ knowledge of customer business are very important for a business analyst

4. Listen and Understand: A business analyst has to be a good listener and with a sharp understanding power without which all the discussions with customer will be fruitless.

3. Technical Knowledge: There will be quite a few technical discussions at customer site. The BA has to be quite conversant with the technologies and methodologies present at his organization.

2. Communication: A business analyst has to be a strong communicator. During the customer meetings, if he does not communicate well about his organization’s capabilities to build up the trust and confidence, probably customer may not gel well with his ideas.

1. Writing skills: Very important skill required for documentation and for conveying the right messages across the board.

Various roles of a Business Analyst

Business Analyst is a quite powerful role forming the base of a project. It is the first visible pillar for a project which involves communication, leadership, writing, technical and functional skills together. A business analyst has to have a great depth of knowledge of the business on one hand, a sharp understanding power, strong writing skills, great communicator, and a good influencer.

For a software company having various new development projects a business analyst has to understand the existing business processes, methodology, rules etc. of the customer, document it (which itself is a specialized task) and hand it over to development team to embed the customer requirements into the software to be built.

For a software (or IT) sales company a business analyst has to sit behind the sales/ business development teams – understanding their current process of acquiring new business or sustaining current business and bring out a better approach, methodology, process to enhance business in terms of new business and holding current business.

For a manufacturing company a business analyst has to understand the process, re-engineer it to enhance the production, product yield, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and reducing defects or rejections.

A business analyst ‘s various caps thus include – business process analyst, business strategy analyst, business methodology analyst thereby becoming a backbone to business process managers, sales teams, management, development teams , product teams, quality teams etc.

Performance Management has nothing to do with the Project Size

Be it large organization or small performance management is the key concern for any size of organization. Every organization has a goal to achieve their goals bound to be for a stipulated period, gain profits, enhance, and set higher targets. Growth is important for every organization.

The same applies to project also. Irrespective of its size, client, and customer requirements, each project has to be a success if in turn the organization has to achieve success. For that purpose performance management becomes a great tool. There has to be a performance management methodology clearly defined for that organization so as to assess the performance of each individual of the organization involved in the project directly or indirectly. A performance methodology should very clearly define the process of measuring performance. The process should be transparent, acceptable, measurable, and simple. Any cumbersome process is good for document purposes for difficult to adhere to.

The methodology should be universal for all the employees at all levels as it is very clearly evident that a project is like a relay race. The overall performance is highly affected by the weaker links. Even if there is a weak member in a very strong team, it is high risk for the overall project. As each member has to perform their individual task, in today’s scenario of recession, lean and low costs, each member’s performance keeps overall organization’s performance at stake.

How to predict the number of bugs in the next code of a programmer

You have a programmer who is writing codes for years that comes to you for testing. The programmer might be coding for a number of projects simultaneously or sequentially. Similar would be the case with you. You would be testing a number of projects simultaneously or one after the other. By now your subconscious mind knows the pattern of bug writing while coding by each of the programmer. But since these patterns are not recorded or analyzed you can not predict the probable number of bugs in the next set of a code from a programmer.

You can do that with the help of your bug reports so far you have submitted back to the programmer or development team. Just pull out your last ten bugs reports produced from the code written by the same programmer. Check for a specific number of lines of code how many bugs were found. Based on this one report’s bugs were from how many lines of code. Do the same exercise for all other reports. Take an average for all ten reports.

Based on the number of lines of code, this way you can easily predict the number of bugs that will be there in the fresh set of code submitted by the programmer for testing.

Five Tips for a project manager for driving (and completing) a Project successfully

Involve all stakeholders throughout: This does not mean that all people involved in the project have to keep them available full-time during the project but it means that the knowledge about the project, project progress, shortcomings, bottlenecks etc. should be continuously shared across the board universally. All members should have the same set of information available with them at any moment of time. Involvement will definitely vary from person to person and phase to phase.

Collaborative, Participative, and Interactive: The information flow should not be one way. It should comprise of praises, shouts, appreciations, arguments etc. Let each brain contribute in making it a success.

Be Demonstrative: Lead the project. Demonstrate by actions what you want from other members. Use fewer words and more actions, especially in case of crisis or a problem.

Identify the lazy goat: If there is any lazy goat that is bound to spoil the show, indentify it at an earlier stage so as to avoid higher risk at a later stage.

Keep a set of your customer shoes with you: Borrow a set of your customer shoes, and keep it with you during the project. Put off your shoes frequently, wear your customer shoes and then have a look at the project pace, progress and status. It will definitely give you a different perspective view.

20 gems for project managers

1. A project manager is always right
2. Quality is seriously maintained by developers while developing software
3. A separate set of people (quality control or testers) is not required to take care of the software produced or developed
4. Testers don’t do any substantial value addition in product development
5. Testers lack business knowledge
6. Testers lack technical knowledge
7. Testers lack essential skills to test software
8. Testers don’t understand product requirements well
9. All developments and implementations are prone to extensions because of change in customer requirements or other customer constraints
10. All delays in development and implementation are due to customer
11. Testers have a very little role to play in product development
12. Testers need less than 1% of project time for testing and reporting bugs
13. Testers should be able to test the product well even if substantial knowledge related to product has not been shared with them
14. Testers are the biggest misleading agents
15. Developers and programmers are not testers and thus are not supposed to test what they develop
16. Testers are de-motivators to programmers and developers
17. Testers are project delayers
18. Customers blame development and implementation teams just to hide their own shortcomings
19. Customers don’t know to explain their processes and business rules well
20. Customers are always interested in delaying the project