DataWebTect

Meetings could be good and bad. I am sure everybody would have had an experience with a bad meeting where two people are trying to solve their problem without the concern for ten people in the room. Meetings could be effective if they are organized in a proper manner and only the agenda items are discussed. Sometimes the people get carried away and could create problems.

For the project management purposes, we may need to have a weekly meeting just to see how the project is going and to resolve any lingering issues. I review the issue and risk logs along with the project status in the project meetings. Then typically publish dashboard reports to the upper management. It works fairly in most of the projects. As you know a project manager would be better judge to determine the frequency of the meetings. He can sit with the project team to get the completion information for the plan but really need everybody in a room for just thiry minutes to review the documents. What do you think?

Randy has a thoughtful information about the Meeting creatures.

There are quite few project management blogs but among them “Project Management Blog” seems to nail the topics. In post about “Requirements Gathering: Why  Context matters?” the blog illustrates the importance of requirements phase.

Requirements gathering is a big challenge and it is not limited to a single representative or a group. It should be agreed upon by the customer and the developing company’s stakeholders. For this the Agile methodology helps significantly because of the interactions with the client at each stage. This is very important as only 39% of the projects are completed on time and budget. The rest of the projects fail because they have not met the requirements of the client or plagued by “Scope creep”. One of the ways to mitigate this situation is to educate the client about the product and highlight the features that would be important to them when arriving at the business requirements/rules. Then review with them to see if they understand at least 50% of the requirements. At this point we can go back and write the business rules/requirements which need to be reviewed by the client. Once approved we can go ahead and create the planning for the project and assign resources. It would be helpful if the project is created in phases(Agile) and each unique phase is completed and shared with the client. If there is any requirement mismatch it would be apparent at this stage. Finally after the execution, it would be helpful to share first cut version(without much bells and whistles) with the client. That way the client is involved all the way and will be able justify the additional cost, if any, because of their change in requirement.

Finally completed the Project Management Professional examination(PMP). Although I had more than five years of Project management experience, believe me I learnt a lot during the preparation. I forgot the source but overall only 39% of projects are successful. This is huge because this says that almost 2/3 of the projects are disasters. I was able to see the same thing, if you have a project manager, and I mean a real project manager not the ones who make the Microsoft project plans and go around asking for the completion percentages, it does make a difference. In a project I managed recently, because of my close monitoring of the deliverables and risk we were able to complete on time and budget for the first time. The PMI approach did help me to a great extent.

No wonder project management has gained wide acceptance across various industries. But it has more relevancy and importance in the software projects. With the certification, I am in the cross roads about my career which I will put some thought and see where I am heading.

I am not sure where I got it  from but I had this self-denial that all project managers need to do was to make up a project plan and work with it.  Then I found one of my colleague getting a good position and moving out because she passed PMP. This kind of aroused an interest and I sought out more information in this regard. I have been leading many projects based on the Microsoft project and managed resources and in the end somebody would not deliver and we had to scramble during the final implementation.

After pursuing different avenues, I finally found a course in the Community college that could prepare me for the PMP certification with least money and long term. This was like 12 weeks course one class per week that was started last fall. I have been attending the classes and the instructor came from the trenches and was able to provide some practical aspect of project management with reference to his organization. Then I had the opportunity to manage a new project that was assigned during my course. I thought this is really good, now I will use my PMP knowledge to handle the project. I started with the clear cut plan and had all the management plans together and tried to work through the methodology of Project management. My boss threw in the SDLC metrics on the mix which initially scared me because of the multiple variables that were not tested before. But in the end it worked out very well except for some outlying minor issues(if they are not there what is the point of IT development). No weekend or long hours for the team and everybody did their part in the time they were assigned and followed the change control and the Customer was happy at the end. This shows that if the project management is properly followed and applied there is great benefit to all the organizations. The overhead was very less compared to the total project cost in our situation. However, the concept was working great in other industries such as manufacturing, housing development but is getting more popular in the Software management.

Great insight about pursuing the MBA by “Personal Finance Weblog“. Personally, I tried to puruse the course but could not see any value or Return on Investment. Now he posts the excerpt from The Accidental Investment Banker by Jonathan Knee. Bottomline, if you want to network and add it to your resume for the employers MBA would be the right thing to do.

The other option could be to pursue the PMP certification which adds value to your resume and does not cost tonnes of money to complete.