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In this Issue:
*allPM Co-publisher, Judy Umlas
*allPM
Co-publisher, Frank Saladis, PMP
*Project Management Events
*allPM February Poll Results
*Feature: Top Ten Practical Tips in MS Project
2000, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP
*Spotlight on PM in Government: Texas
Department of Human Service’s Project-Centric Business Model
Beyond the PMO, How a Texas Agency Turns Project Management into its Customer
Service Model, Written by:
David Brandon
*Feature: Project Management Poetry, Risk Log, by Rachel Goldstein, allPM.com Bard
*Column: Positive Leadership in Project Management: Twelfth
in a Series - Managing Your Leadership Role, by Frank Saladis, PMP
*Column: The Ins and Outs of Risk Management, by
Dr. David Hillson, PMP FAPM
*Column: The Politics of Metrics,
The PMO Challenge, by,
Catherine R. Werbeck
*Is Poor Project Management a Crime? (EVMS and the
Sarbanes-Oxley Act),
by Ruthanne Schulte, PMP
*Column: Guidelines for Successful Risk
Facilitating and Analysis, by Dr. Iqbal Noor, PE CCE, and Thomas J. Rye
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allPM Newsletter
Co-publisher, Judy Umlas
 Change is in the air, and frankly, it makes me a
little nervous -- even with the promise it brings of growth, new possibilities
and expansion! First, there is the change of seasons. It is now officially
Spring and on the one hand, I'm ecstatic that we have made it through a
really challenging, frigid and messy winter. But Spring in the air is a
reminder that summer is right behind, with no summer plans yet on the
horizon but the end of school for our kids now creeping up. Then,
allPM.com's wonderful administrator, Carolyn Osborn, is leaving us to start
a new life on the West Coast. We will miss her dearly-- many of you have
commented in our Forums about what a great job she has done. Of course we
anticipate that our next Administrator, soon to be announced, will be
wonderful as well, but it is sad and a bit unsettling to lose Carolyn. We
wish her the best in her new home, life and career. Then there is the
upgrade of allPM.com that we have been working on for the past few months.
That will be launching soon and we are excited about the changes, but a
little nervous as well. We hope you will bear with us when it comes if there
are any bugs we didn't catch, but we will announce it so you will be
prepared. We think the changes will make it worthwhile.
So maybe I just need some good coaching in
"change management" in both the personal and professional arenas!
Well, I'm open to your "coaching" if you have any great ideas.
Speaking of this topic, would anyone like to submit an article about Change
Management? That would probably be helpful to all of us! Speaking of
speaking about this topic, are there subjects that you feel we should be
covering that we aren't and which would be useful to you? What are we
missing? We have such a rich, resourceful pool of contributors that if you
just ask for it, we can probably get it for you! Please write and tell me
what you want or need to help make your project successes a guarantee!
In this issue of allPM Today, we have some
excellent and thought-provoking articles. They range in subjects from the
Politics of Metrics, to EVMS and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (a real attention
grabber, especially with the opening line being "Is poor project
management a crime? The answer could be 'yes'….") to the ins and outs
of Risk Management, to how a Texas Agency turned Project Management into
its customer service model. In between these articles we have another
Project Management Poetry submission on "Risk Logs" by our allPM
Bard Rachel Goldstein. I would still love to get PM Poems from our readers
as well, though, so get creative!
We also have yet another of Frank Saladis'
excellent and practical articles on Leadership. You should all be aware of
the four session live eLearning series Frank is presenting starting on
April 20, "The Leader Within-- Developing Positive Project Leadership
within Your Organization." allPM.com members get a $20 discount on the
$245 series. All you need is a computer with a high speed connection, and
you will get to interact directly with Frank -- you may even have the
opportunity to bug him a bit during the Q & A part of the sessions
about that "Project Management Blues" song he has been promising
to record for you for the past year. More importantly, I must admit, you
will learn a lot from a master in Leadership principles and practicalities.
We want to thank one of allPM.com's premiere
sponsors, PMO Link, for its support of the PM Tips of the Day. Their
subject matter experts have been providing allPM.com readers with a second
set of valuable tips-- in addition to the ones we are running-- on the
theme of the month on allPM.com, PM Metrics. We also have an article in
this newsletter by one of their esteemed SME's, Bob Noor and his co-author,
Thomas Rye, on "Guidelines for Successful Risk Facilitating and
Analysis." We appreciate PMO Link's worthwhile contributions -- please
check them out.
Now I want to make an announcement (taa dah!!!):
allPM's second MVP (Most Valuable Professional) is Bernard Ertl of
InterPlan Systems. His "nickname" on our Forums is very fitting:
"Quite a Regular" and you see him answering questions on
allPM.com Forums all the time. We greatly appreciate his input and advice,
and will be giving him a "free pass" to the live online six hour
seminar, "Kerzner on Best Practices in PM." Our first MVP, Harry
Waldron thought the session he attended was fabulous (you can check out his
comments on the "Best Practices Forum" on allPM) so we are sure
Bernard will benefit from it as well. Congratulations, Bernard, and we
thank you for your continuous and worthwhile presence on our Forums.
So in this time of continuous change, I hope you
are managing yours well. I look forward to hearing from you! Don’t forget
to "coach" me on change management if you have something
profound, interesting or witty to say, and write to me at judy.umlas@allpm.com! As you know, I
really enjoy hearing from you. Have a great month!
Judy Umlas
Judy.Umlas@allPM.com
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From the Co-publisher's Desk-
Frank P. Saladis, PMP
 Metrics! They are everywhere.
We have gallons, liters, teaspoons, miles, kilometers, inches, centimeters,
yards, meters, benchmarks, task durations, milestones and many more. We
measure schedule performance, budget variations, the number of channels in
a project team, how long meetings last, elapsed time, height, weight, and
distance. We have parametrics, bottom up estimating, analogous estimating,
and earned value management plus an assortment of project management
software to help us compute, analyze and report about what we measure.
Why are metrics important? Well, there is a saying
that "what gets measured gets done" or "you can’t manage
what you can’t measure." Many organizations have sophisticated
processes for measuring just about anything from customer satisfaction to
employee productivity. In project management, we use metrics to help us
understand how well our projects are performing in the areas of scope,
time, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. The fact is, we do need
metrics if we want to improve how we do things.
This month we have been featuring daily tips on
metrics on the home page of allPM.com, and in this issue of allPM Today we
address the importance of metrics and how we can use them most effectively
to achieve project success. Most project managers rely on metrics to
communicate information, from the use of a "red, yellow, green"
simplified approach for reporting status, to a comprehensive earned value
analysis with trends, identification of variances and an action plan to
correct deviations from the plan. Whatever the form of metrics being used,
metrics are the key to moving forward. We need to know where we are, where
we have to go, and how far off the plan we have gone. This sets the stage
for developing corrective action. We also need metrics to show us that we
are in or out of control. allPM.com is providing you with ideas, tools and
suggestions to enhance your project control center and offer methods to
make metrics more meaningful, easier to communicate, and more valuable to
your team and organization. So read on, and go back to our articles
archives to read all the past PM Tips of the Day for this month and see how
we "measure up" in the area of metrics.
Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Frank.Saladis@allpm.com
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Partial Listing of Upcoming
Project Management Events
For a complete listing of events, or to add
your own event for free, please visit the Online Calendar at allPM.com
Partager pour réussir
April 1, 2004
http://www.pmi-fr.org/cgi-bin/axs.cgi?chapitre=france-sud
Requirements Management 2-day Workshop in Jacksonville
April 13, 2004
http://www.orasiglobalservices.com/news/seminars.html
Présentation d'OPM3 - Tools and Tips
April 15, 2004
http://www.pmi-fr.org
Requirements Management 2-day Workshop in Kansas
City
April 20, 2004
http://www.orasiglobalservices.com/news/seminars.html
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February Poll Results
Benchmarking is
a good way for PMs and Executives to learn PM best practices. My company:
benchmarks own industry 29.17 % (7)
benchmarks other industries plus own 16.67 % (4)
does not benchmark 54.17 % (13)
Total votes: 24
March's poll question is:
What criteria does your company use to reward
project completion?
A. On time, on budget, within scope
B. Customer
satisfaction, high quality
C. My
organization does not offer project rewards
If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add
your opinion
today.
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allPM Today
Tips Feature
Top Ten Practical Tips in MS Project 2000,
by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP
TIP # 5:
You can quickly develop a scenario of the schedule that will tell you how
much the lack of resources will slip the project end date. A
fully-leveled schedule can be developed by choosing Tools, Resource
Leveling, select Level entire project, de-select Level Only within
Available Slack and click Level Now. The resulting finish date is often
too far in the future and would be nice-to-have as a project manager. For
this scenario to work, you cannot have many hard schedule constraints in
your schedule. You can go back to the scenario without leveling that you
started with by choosing Tools, Resource Leveling and clicking the Clear
Leveling button. In my next tip, I will explain how you can solve many
over-allocations while staying within the project deadline.
SUBMITTED TO MPUG, Dec 2001
Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration;
PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certificaton, International Institute
for Learning, Inc and author of "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft
Project ® 2000." This tip appeared in the 3/2001 MPUG eZine.
Spotlight
on PM in Government:
Texas Department of Human Service’s Project-Centric
Business Model
Beyond the PMO, How a Texas Agency Turns
Project Management into its Customer Service Model
Written by: DAVID BRANDON
As a project
manager, I want authority to manage the resources to accomplish project
objectives.
As a project
manager, I want a Project Management Office that develops and enforces PM
processes.
As a Project
Manager, I want an environment that fosters cooperative customer
relations.
As a project
manager in the public sector, I do not want to deal with the bureaucracy
that normally accompanies a public sector project.
Where are these "Best Practices in Project
Management" that will help me be a better project manager?
They're in Austin,
Texas.
The Texas Department of Human Services Management
Information Systems Division (DHS MIS) places emphasis on Projects to
quickly react to business needs. Further, the DHS MIS business model
calls for an organiz ational mode-- with four key Business Areas - that
supports the Project Manager.
David
is the Editor for the Government SIG Magazine. David is a Project Manager
at the Texas Department of Human Services MIS Division in Austin,
Texas. He has over 13 years
experience directing and managing multiple, simultaneous information
technology projects for the State of Texas.
David has a BBA in Finance and Accounting from the University
of Texas at Arlington.
He is PMI certified, holds the PMO Certificate of Added Qualification,
and is certified in Microsoft Project. Prior to joining the State of Texas,
David was an information technology consultant to the public sector.
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Project
Management Poetry: Risk Log
By Rachel Goldstein, Newly Appointed
"allPM.com Bard"
If you think that there's a chance
That a risk could happen at all
You first assess the impact
If this risk should then befall.
Would it end the project outright?
Would it ratchet up the cost?
Would it tie up more resources?
Or would more time be lost?
Rachel
Goldstein is a Senior Systems Analyst at The New York
Times, a member of the NYT Company-wide Project Management Task Force.
She has been a Project Manager in IT for close to 20 years, and the
poetry and song parodies have been going on for longer than that.
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Column: Positive Leadership in
Project Management - Twelfth in a Series - Managing Your Leadership Role
Written by: Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Leaders, regardless of personal style and skills,
should have a personal management and maintenance plan. Just like a
vehicle needs maintenance every 10,000 miles or a machine needs care and
attention to keep it running smoothly, or a project needs a review at the
end of each phase, leaders need some type of leadership maintenance
check. Even if things appear to be going well, we schedule check-ups for
our cars, equipment we use, and even our own bodies.
Frank P. Saladis (PMP)
is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He
has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management
Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology
Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation
Review Process (PERP). He is the former President of the NYC PMI Chapter.
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Column: The Ins and Outs of
Risk Management
Written by: Dr. David Hillson,
PMP FAPM
The term GIGO is famous as an abbreviation for
the phrase "Garbage In Garbage Out". Originally used in the IT
industry, it described the fact that the output from a computer system
was only as good as its input. Even the best program cannot take
meaningless data and produce meaningful results. Of course GIGO applies
much more widely than to just computers. The integrity of the output from
almost every system or process depends on the integrity of its input--
with the possible exception of the human brain, which seems able to
create order out of chaos by the application of reasoning and
intelligence (at least sometimes!). And "Garbage In Garbage
Out" can certainly apply to the risk management process.
Dr. David Hillson, PMP FAPM
FIRM MCMI is an international risk management
consultant, and Director of Risk Doctor & Partners (www.risk-doctor.com).
His specialty is risk technology transfer, assisting organizations to
develop in-house risk processes, and he is a popular conference speaker
and author on risk, winning several awards for his papers. He is
recognized internationally as a leading thinker and practitioner in risk
management, and his recent emphasis has been the inclusion of proactive
opportunity management within the risk process, which is the topic of his
latest book "Effective
opportunity management : Exploiting positive risk",
published in 2003 by Dekker of New York.
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Column: The Politics of
Metrics, The PMO Challenge
Written by: Catherine R. Werbeck, Project
Manager, PMO Leader
Every company measures success in different ways.
They use baseline-reporting, slippage and earned value, issue reporting,
risk analysis and tracking. Project Managers and/or the PMO are
accountable to establish the metrics they will track and report on the
progress of their project.
I would like to go out on the proverbial limb to
say, that most of the time Project Managers take their metrics
personally, as well they should. However, to quote the quintessential
line; "It's not personal, it’s business." Too often we tie
ourselves to the numbers and the color status of the project and send the
report up the flagpole with little thought as to the political impact we
are having on our project, on our team and on ourselves.
Catherine Werbeck currently
works in Waltham, MA
running an ISD PMO. She brings 10 years of experience in project
management and employs a team based management style, excellent
interpersonal skills and a strategic and out of the box thinker. She is a
freelance conslutant and active participant in the PMI Leadership
Institute, Class of 2004.
For additional information, or to book a speaking engagemetn please
contact Catherine via email at CRWerbeck@aol.com
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Column: Is Poor Project
Management a Crime? (EVMS and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act)
A White Paper By:
Ruthanne
Schulte, PMP
Welcom (www.welcom.com)
Introduction
Is poor project management a crime? The answer
could be 'yes' now that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act makes senior executives
criminally liable for misrepresenting financial information. After several
corporate accounting scandals became public, Congress passed a law,
referred to as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), which holds CEOs and
CFOs of publicly traded companies criminally liable for relating fraud to
shareholders. Companies are aggressively taking action to meet the
requirements dictated by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In fact, it has been
reported that nearly 77% of companies will spend more on IT, business
process change, corporate governance, and/or consulting this year as a
direct result of SOX compliance.
Ms. Ruthanne
Schulte is employed at Welcom as a product
manager for a leading earned value management software package called
Cobra. She has been employed with Welcom since 1990 and has contributed
to the company's growth as an implementation consultant, software
developer, and product architect. Prior to joining Welcom, Ms. Schulte
was employed with the Texas State Department of Highways as a design
engineer. Ms. Schulte holds a BS Degree in Civil Engineering from Texas
A&M University.
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Column:
Guidelines for Successful Risk Facilitating and Analysis
32 Cost Engineering Vol. 42/No. 4 APRIL 2000
Written by: Dr. Iqbal Noor, PE CCE, and Thomas J. Rye
ABSTRACT:
This article presents guidelines for risk facilitating and risk analysis
of cost estimates.
These guidelines are based on the successes and lessons-learned from one company's
approach to risk-weighted cost estimates. Key issues relating to the
identification and quantification of risks are addressed. In particular,
the role of the risk facilitator in developing the cost-influence matrix
is discussed; emphasis is on the subtleties involved in overcoming some
of the statistical issues, and issues such as the correlation among
influence factors and the development of appropriate risk analysis models
are discussed. A step-by-step approach through the various phases of the risk
analysis process is presented.
Author: Dr. Iqbal Noor
Title: Project Management Consultant, PMOLink Inc Copyright Date: April
2000
Publisher: AACE International
Co Author: Thomas Rye
Title: Leader Cost and Schedule Engineering, BP Copyright Date: April
2000
Publisher: AACE International
Reprinted with the permission of AACE International, 209
Prairie Ave., Suite 100, Morgantown, WV
25601 USA.
Phone 800-858-COST/304-296-8444. Fax: 304-291-5728. Internet: http://www.aacei.org E-mail:
info@aacei.org
Copyright © by AACE International; all rights reserved.
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