Synergy. Collaborating Project Management for High Performance Business Insight

Synergy PMI North India Chapter Collaborating Project Management for High Performance Business Insight Issue 7 October –December 2012 e-Magazine ...
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Synergy

PMI North India Chapter

Collaborating Project Management for High Performance Business Insight

Issue 7

October –December 2012 e-Magazine

this issue

Welcomes

New elected Chapter Board Members.

Soft skills mends differences in personalities...

By - Piyush Govil PMP

More articles for PM Fraternity ®

Message from Chapter President Dear Chapter Members & Practitioners, We are now at the end of this very eventful and exciting year at North India Chapter of PMI. This year saw creation of very comprehensive chapter bye-laws by chapter board in confirming to changing times, PMI suggestions and need for extending the board size to cater to ever growing list of activities and events in coming years. The same got overwhelmingly approved by the chapter members in a transparent online fashion and subsequent approval of the same was also received from PMI Asia Pacific Office. Subsequently, chapter board created an Election Nomination Committee comprising of following distinguished very senior professionals. We take this opportunity for thanking them for conducting and successful completion of transparent and fair elections as per Chapter Election Guidelines. It takes a fair amount of effort & time out of personal commitments to accomplish the same and we acknowledge their efforts for doing this for our chapter for third year in a row. Manoj K. Gupta President & CEO PMI NI Chapter

Election Nomination Committee

Vote of Thanks Tejas Sura Regional Mentor, PMI Region 11 Joint Managing Director Conart Engineers Limited

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Ramam Atmakuri, VP Cognizant & Member – PMI Chapter MAG. Winner of PMI Eric Jenett Project Management Excellence Award

Brij Nandan Yadava Vice President DLF Home Developers Ltd.

Chapter Election Results Elections were conducted as per Chapter’s Elections Guidelines which were fully compliant with PMI’s guidelines and the results of the same were declared on Dec 21, 2012 as follows:

President & CEO Manoj K Gupta (Elected Unopposed)

VP - Corporate Relations Shalini Lamba (Elected Unopposed)

Chief Finance & Compliance Officer Amit Chauhan (Elected Unopposed)

VP - Volunteer Management Sachin Aggarwal (Elected)

VP – Technology Pritam Gautam (Elected Unopposed)

VP - Government Relations Vanita Ahuja

(Elected)

Secretary Position went uncontested and will be filled in by nominations by Chapter Board.

From the Editor’s Desk Dear Fellow Professionals, Editorial Team reaches your desktop with 7th Edition of SYNERGY with more valuable articles from PM fraternity. Your contribution to SYNERGY is setting benchmarks with each edition. With this end of year 2012 edition, we wish you a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2013 ahead. Year 2012 has been eventful for SYNERGY; more and more members have shown their confidence by sharing their articles with the community. SYNERGY is growing relentlessly with every edition. Year end is always a busy period, since everyone looks back to review their performance and extract lacunae to inscribe all in lessons learned document. With the arrival of New Year, we all start planning to work on improvement areas from all lessons learned in the past year to achieve professional heights in the year ahead. Believe in your inner strength with this life truth like “Honey Bee” from whom we can steal as much as honey from its beehive but technique of making Honey will always be a strength of Honey Bee, no one can steal that technique. Believe in yourself and inner strength. I would like to urge to members of entire PM community to share the SYNERGY edition and motivate fellow professionals to get involved with publication to share and learn from each other. Happy Reading! Regards Piyush Govil PMP® Vice –President – Communications PMI North India Chapter 2 Save your Earth!

Table of Contents

1.

Leading in leaderless organization ..................................................... 5

2.

Lean thinking smarter way to demonstrate ........................................... 7

3.

Project management lessons from the film world ................................... 10

4.

Efficient human resource management ................................................ 12

5.

Program management contribution to business process ............................ 14

6.

Governance ................................................................................ 17

7.

Self sustainability of project management metrics .................................. 18

8.

Quantified approach to project risk assessment model ............................. 22

9.

Project specific procurement ........................................................... 25

10. User Intimacy for IT managers .......................................................... 27 11. Interview Series ........................................................................... 28 12. Managing agile vs traditional? What’s difference..................................... 29 13. Regulatory and compliance .............................................................. 33 14. Data analysis and reporting .............................................................. 35 15. Fusion of Agile - Scrum to BDD .......................................................... 39 16. New Volunteer Program Lauch .......................................................... 42 17. Past Events ................................................................................. 43

Design and conceptualization: Piyush Govil Articles review and support: , Kumar Saurabh, Nirmallya Kar, Prashant Malhotra, Pooja Gandhi, Hemant Seigell, Nitin N Singh, Abhijit B Kumar, Manoj Gupta, Piyush Govil Online Support: Pritam Gautam 3 Save your Earth!

North India Chapter is also excited to announce that it has been awarded the rights for hosting the PMI National Conference 2013 in New Delhi

More g teerin n u l o V ties i n u t Oppor

Get Involved

Join and collaborate to create Magic!

PMI India National Conference 2013

HOST - PMI North India Chapter

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Leading in a Leaderless Organization By—Rahul Bhattacharyya PMP® Micromanagement is a common malady afflicting many organizations. I wish there was a mechanism to quantify its destructive impact; especially, since, in most organizations, micromanagement is commonly practiced mostly by ‘competent jerk’ managers. Such managers are capable but incessantly vying for control. Adding to the problem, the bosses of these micromanaging ‘jerks’ often remain aloof because micromanagement tends to generate shortterm results. Only when employee morale dips really low and financial damage occurs is the situation rectified.

His boss’s typical response was, “Look… I know, you have the desire for more autonomy. But what would I do when I stop engaging with you?” Is it a fair question? The answer is emphatic “No”.

Evidently, my friend’s boss could not envision how he would add value and remain relevant as a manager if he delegated some control. Jeffery Pfeffer, a celebrated professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, released a book in 2007 titled “What Were They Thinking?” The book is a collection of 28 thought-provoking essays on various issues encountered in leadership and people management. In Chapter 6, Pfeffer talks about giving autonomy to employees and presents an example of a ‘leaderless’ or ‘multi-leader’ organization, where leadership is shared and rotated among the members. While reading this chapter, I revisited the argument that my friend’s boss had put forward and thought of listing down a few ideas on how leaders managing highly empowered, responsible, and selfdriven teams can continue to add value:

Key Points

A friend of mine had a micromanaging boss at his workplace. At times, my friend asked his boss why he couldn’t leave the team alone, since it was perfectly capable of performing well without being hounded by dozens of follow-up emails.

Leaders should engage with the team by asking the right questions. Leaders should build a culture in which team members react positively to eye opening questions and accept the questions as a way for the leader to add value. Leaders should bring in a broader

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business perspective through these questions and guide the members in the right direction. By asking the right questions, leaders not only develop a clear understanding of what is going on in the team but also nurture the confidence and competencies of their team members.

Leaders should play a critical role in nurturing the ‘team-centric’ environment. They should observe team dynamics and make sure that a healthy relationship exists among the team members. They should clarify goals and hold people accountable to those goals. They should also establish norms in the team and create a hunger for high performance.

Leaders must invest time in enhancing their own knowledge and skills. In today’s knowledge-driven economy, respect and authority is earned only through knowledge and insight. By developing knowledge, leaders are likely to be better equipped to ask great questions. That would also empower them to mentor team members, and earn credibility and influence.

Finally, leaders, for the sake of their own growth, should try to groom future leaders and move on to the next stage of their journeys. A leader who can repeat the cycle of “building a team—maturing it—growing a leader—building the next team” in increasingly complex scenarios is likely to achieve phenomenal career growth.

Leaders should look for future opportunities for their teams. This initiative could take many forms. Many employees leave organizations because of the lack of challenging work. Leaders can assume a ‘business development’ role and find interesting work for their team inside the organization. They can use the team’s efficiency as a bargaining tool. Another example would be to identify the ‘next level’ of maturity for the team and throw a challenge; for example, developing new technical/ functional skills or work processes.

An empowered team does not make a leader irrelevant. It only throws unique challenges and Take away opportunities. Leaders can evolve and achieve career success by responding to those challenges in a positive and thoughtful manner.

Rahul Bhattacharyya Rahul Bhattacharyya is currently responsible for program management of Cloud based productivity tools at Adobe Systems India (P) Ltd.

About Author

He has ten years of experience in Quality Engineering and Management of multiple flagship products such as Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat and Printer products. Rahul is experienced in hiring, building and managing high performance teams coaching people and building teams. He is an MBA in General Management from Queen's School of Business, Canada. Rahul took his PMP certification in 2008 and is a Stanford Certified Project Manager.

Soft skill is an art to use blunt objects with ease. By - Piyush Govil PMP® 6 Save your Earth!

Lean Thinking– smarter way to demonstrate excellent teamwork By— Saket Bansal PMP® Project Planning is a crucial function of a Project Management team. One of the most important steps in the planning is Time Management. We stipulate a certain extent of duration for the execution and completion of a project successfully. What, if you get to achieve the target in time duration less than allotted. This means you would be able to save a lot of time and do some other works as well along side. Now, here comes my point, if you really want to save on some time then its better you gear up for Lean Thinking. Lean Thinking is of course not a new word for your folks. Almost everyone from almost any industry is vying for the same. Well who doesn’t want some Activity

Start

End

extra perks? For starters, it is important to understand that, Lean Thinking doesn’t imply that you have to accelerate your body engine to perform task with the ‘speed of light’. This simply means that you have to curb down all the distractions that your team is prey to. Let us consider a day in the life of a “typical” project team member. Ajay is a software engineer working on a large system Integration project and he is responsible for customization of billing system. Let see Ajay’s typical activities on a typical day:

Value

Waste

Tea

09:30

10:00

0

30 min

Emails , Jokes , News reading, forwarding interesting topics, sending good morning mail Tea Break

10:00

11:00

0

1 hr

11:00

11:30

0

30 Min

Project Status Meeting

11:30

12:30

10 min

50 Min

Talking about status meeting, and preparing some information Lunch

12:30

13:00

0

30 Min

13:00

14:00

0

1 Hr

Discussing details of Customization with BA

14:00

15:00

20 Min

Developing on the code based on discussion with BA Tea Break

15:00

16:00

16:00

16:30

Call with Customer

16:30

17:30

Making MOM of call and recoding discussion held with BA Taking about new movie and weekend plans

17:30

18:00

0

30 Min

18:00

18:30

0

30

1 Hr 40 Min

7 hr 20 min

40 Min BA got 3 calls in between and Ajay was just waiting , and Ajay himself got 2 calls 1 hr 0 0

30 min

20 min 40 min, he got some clarification on his query, but the customer was spending more time in explaining how bad the last release was.

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Now, this is a general survey, your statistics may vary from mine. But, the bottom line is that the executives are wasting most of their crucial time of their working day in dilly-dallying instead of working real. If you will really look into the situation and make your analysis, then it would be an eye opener that the revenue generated by the company is negligible in comparison to the investment made for the management of such employees in the firm. It is very essential to define and prioritize the value of time to all the team members before you stumble down the ladder of competition in such a cutthroat era of business. Slash down the unnecessary meetings called to discuss petty matters of the firm. Rather call a group discussion and short meetings to decide on constructive and innovative means to achieve the business ends and cut down on the wastage in any form.

Value stream- Identify the value stream for each project Flow Let value stream have an uninterrupted flow Pull- Customers should be able to pull or gain value from the project team Perfection- Continuous efforts must be invested to derive perfection at the end

There should be quick actions over the matters of importance and nobody should dawdle in the time stipulated for the project completion. Make your team understand what is constructive and what is destructive for a successful team. For, this I have prepared a short checklist of five Lean Principles of Lean Thinking. These principles have been devised to understand and learn what waste is. These help you in comprehending the active operational values and successful deliverance of the project.

This leads us to the exact definition of Value An activity on a project is value-added if it transforms the deliverables of the project in such a way that the customer recognizes the transformation and is willing to pay for it.

Values

Value of a project- It is essential for a project manager to underline the value of each project to the team members so that they give priority to what is to be done on first hand.

Project activities can be categorized into three types based upon the “value” criterion Pure value-added tasks Waste Type I-Non-value added but is somehow important for the job to be done Waste Type II- Purely non value-added A low-hanging fruits to be eliminated

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It’s time you pay all attention and be a judge for yourself. Mark the category which you feel matches your experience accurately Activity Conducting a weekly team coordination meeting

Value

Waste : Type 1

Waste : Type 2

Hunting for needed information Presenting project status to senior management Getting multiple approval on project document Waiting for test labs and server infrastructure

Now that we understand that value is what actually a customer pays, we have to be uptight to find out what is best for deriving value oriented results. Once the team members have understood what is ‘value system’ and what actually customer pays them for, it would be lot easier for you to make them learn how to stop wasting time and energy which could have been used otherwise efficiently. This is the magic of Lean Thinking you tend to eliminate what all is waste of and not any value to the customer’s project.

To be precise, once you team recognizes what is value oriented they will definitely invest their energy in what pays them and not what wastes them. Draw a flow chart, line out what is important and paid. Outline what could be a ‘waste’ in terms of time, money and energy too. This way it would be easier for you to exercise lean management strategies at you work place.

Waste thus eliminated will also be helpful in clearing the obstacles intruding the work performance. You would be able to fend the major tasks from all the difficulties. What we can derive from the entire discussion is that Lean Thinking can be defined best as - keeping the value flow intact and eliminating waste en route.

Take away

You should maintain a strict vigil inspired by lean thinking i.e. discipline in project team and waste elimination from time to time.

About Author

Saket Bansal Saket is passionate about building strong learning communities with great dedication and efforts. His exposure to the Information technology combined with management knowledge I have been organizing meet ups and community events. He is PMP , PMI-ACP , CSM , ITIL F

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Project Management lessons from the film world By—Shankar Laxman I was flipping through a plethora of Movie channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon, trying to settle down to something that will be light on my siesta craving mind. Finally, I settled down for a classic which I had watched many times over. I am not a movie freak but I have always been fascinated by many things that the reel world offers subtly in more ways than one, for us to learn. Given that there are many things to learn, I wanted to list down atleast a few things that I could comprehend. With this running over at the back of my head, I dozed off for a short while, only to wake up with a resolve to share my perspective of what we can learn in terms of project management from the fascinating world of filmdom.

list down few of the concepts that I could comprehend from the world of show biz along with some witty quotes that is applicable for in the PM world.

Ever Learning Ever wondered while watching a flick that was a hit five years ago and exclaimed, “how could this pic be so successful??”. Many have experienced this! Most likely, it was a hit because, it catered to the masses at that time and the audience perspectives have changed ever since. If that same cinema had been released now, chances are that this would not have crossed the week mark. That’s the same that applies to our environment. Client’s perspective on IT services is ever evolving. PM techniques that worked in the past would be not so effective if it was used now. As a renowned filmmaker Edward Zwick puts it” I think one of the privileges of being a filmmaker is the opportunity to remain a kind of perpetual student”. As a trait of a good student, P r ojec t m a na ge me n t needs to learn new ways time and again to deliver the expected and also adapt to environmental changes to be effective. Alfred Hitchcock once quipped “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out”. What is seen on the Editing

In the time of crises, I always use my body double! That’s the beauty of managing project in film industry. screen is an abridged verBy –Piyush Govil sion of reality with all the Ask a film personality about what they are doing currently and their answer will inevitably refer to the term “project” sprinkled over all of their sentences. There is not even an iota of doubt that Filmdom projects have a lot of lessons for us offer and use it in the IT world and more specifically in the realm of project management. I have attempted to

mundane events left out. This can’t be more appropriate in our context where many of the client meetings gets diluted when the point of focus shifts from the core to issues that are way below in the priority list. Hence, if we can take the dull bits out of the context and focus on core issues, our client engagements will be more fruitful. 10

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Hence, if we can take the dull bits out of the context and focus on core issues, our client engagements will be more fruitful. Resource Crunch Some of the issues that jeopardize the project stem from the resourcing front. What better way to learn from the industry which employs people from all walks of life. There is space for everyone to grow and each occupy a specific position in the film world. Also, there is no room for redundancy in reel world where the department in-charge needs to put exactly the right person on the right job. When the resource crunch does become a reality, the film world has shown that they can manage creatively to still do their business as usual. This can’t be explained any further than by Charlie Chaplin’s who during troubled times quoted that “All I Need to Make a Comedy is a Park, a Policeman and a Pretty Girl.” Reusability Every director has an innate touch which will be exhibited in their first few flicks. Creative ideas do come at a price. So, they don’t look only for new ideas all the time but use winning formula from different works and mix them. Project managers get a deft touch in handling their assignments through experience. These can be documented and reused when similar challenges show up. Film industry thrives on this as Jean Renoir agrees” A Director Makes Only One Movie in His Life. Then He Breaks It Into Pieces and Makes It Again”

Purpose In many cases of project management, the phrase “Means to an end” gives way to “Means become the end”. Good Project management is an enabler for successful projects and cannot be taken as the End objective. This shift of focus spells doom in many projects where the focus is completely shifted sidelining the very purpose why project management is there in the first place. This is like putting the cart before the cattle. Film industry also has this parody where many believe that the objective of making a good movie is to make money. As Walt Disney would like to put it” We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies”. Clarity on the project management objectives will ensure that there are no “war room meetings” later. To sum up, effective project management should provide a feeling of oneness in a client reTake away lation. As successful movies do best, they pull the audience to be a part of their story, so should the project management be. Growing together with all the stakeholders should not merely be a lip service but should be a principle that drives work every day. This was aptly phrased by Roman Polanski as” Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater”

Shankar Laxman Shankar has more than eight years of experience in IT and more than six years of experience in SAP.

About Author

Have exposure to clients from varied industries ranging from Media, Manufacturing and Banking. During the course of all these years, he has gained exposure in the execution and management of Support, testing and Roll out projects. He is currently associated with Cognizant Technologies

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Efficient Human Resource Management By—Anju Agarwal PMP® Background: Employee Termination The termination of an employee is a situation that must be approached using facts and tact and must be handled with care this article talks about a more human approach to the corporate termination process.One must always remember that it’s the employees who run the organization not the brand or image always. They are an indispensible asset who cannot be ignored even during recession or services discontinuation for whatever reasons as justified. Objective- Understanding Business Impact Terminating employment is an emotional and legal mine field for both the employer and the employee. There is the potential for unfair dismissal claims, decline in company’s public image, difficulty in recruiting new employees and low workplace morale amongst the remaining employees. More often, the terminated employee, regardless of their history with the organization are treated poorly as though they were most unproductive and most lowly employees in the organization. Layoffs have a significant impact on the attitude and performance of both types of employees, those who are terminated by an organization and those who continue to work there. Exclaimed one employee: "One day I was recognized by senior managers for some task, the next day it was as if I didn't exist! ". Employees feel sad, depressed, ostracized and cheated. For those who remain, as well as for the community, there is often a significant erosion of loyalty, trust and support. Layoffs should only be used as a last resort. Recent survey reports indicate that their benefits are greatly overrated: "Layoffs emerge as a risky, painful, and inhumane form of management that only in the worst cases can resuscitate a dying organization."

Use the magical word "WE" and not "I" or "YOU" during the project status calls and in most of the project communications. By—Sarika Mishra, IBM Noida

Key Take- Away while handling situations

Give employee a choice One way in which an organization can show respect is to give employees as much choice as possible about when and how they will leave. Give them several weeks' advance notice that their jobs were redundant, as well as a choice about the timing of their departure. Although the loss of their jobs had a significant impact on employees, they appreciated having a choice about when and how they would leave. When valued and hard-working employees are unceremoniously escorted out the door, it undermines any self-esteem and pride they may still have. It also erodes the trust that remaining employees have in the organization. Deal with employees Honestly and Fairly Causes for dismissal should be shared openly, with straightforward focus on business ethics and mutual respect. Honesty goes a long way, and soon-to-beex-employees usually recognize and appreciate a candid discussion with no hidden agendas. Effective managers and human resources professionals recognize the benefits of compassion for those who no longer have a job. Severance packages should be crafted taking in to account: The employee’s longterm history with the company, The ability of employer to pay severance and The corporate culture. Good Communication During a time of significant change resulting in the termination of employees, it is critical that everyone in the organization be kept fully informed about what is happening. It is extremely important to dispel the shroud of secrecy that often surrounds this type of situation. If the employee is performing poorly, you need to inform them of specific performance issues, in a timely manner. 12

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You shouldn’t fire an employee for poor performance if the employee has no idea that his or her performance is poor, inform and decide rule. Be Respectful If you treat a departing employee with respect, it is far more likely they will offer the same in return, thereby avoiding major problems. Too often, however, employee termination is handled badly and in haste. An employee represents a part of organization. He or She has given valuable time to the organization, hence it is imperative that he or she is treated with due respect during the termination proceedings as well. Just because the organization doesn’t need the employee for whatsoever reasons, does not justify the manager or the HR department for ill-treating that employee. Always treat the employee with dignity. Transition the terminated employee’s duties Make sure the manager knows exactly what duties the terminated employees handle and how they will be covered going forward. Don’t wait until the vendor payment in the office is late to realize that the downsized worker raised that vendor invoices every month. Don’t burn bridges In a downsize situation, it makes good business sense to maintain a positive relationship with the terminated employee. He or she may be a source of business in the future. If the employee is eligible for rehire if the company’s situation improves, make sure he or she knows that, and leaves forwarding information.

Explain the benefits A person from human resource department should explain the severance package and other related things. This information should also be given in writing, because they are usually too emotional to listen clearly to those particulars at that point. Secure the Loyalty of remaining staff Insensitive employee termination can create insecurity among other employees. They may start to wonder whether they are next on the chopping block, whether they will be treated the same way, and even, if this is the company they want to work. Closing Thoughts Organizations should remember that a little professionalism and planning at the start can make the most uncomfortable termination both easier and legally compliant later. In planning terminations, organizations should aim to provide the highest level of comfort and dignity to the individual who is terminated and support for their work group, while minimizing any risk to the organization. REFERENCES: Mary Ellen Szadkowski and Mary Buckley, GSIC– A more Humane approach to Employee Termination http://www.improvemybusiness.com.au/manage-staff/staffdevelopment/employee-termination-adhering-to-the-legal-andethical-standards http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/workforcemanagement/employee-performance-management/managingemployee-terminations.aspx

About Author

Anju Agarwal Anju has 13+ years of experience in IT. She has worked in various domains like Insurance Sector, Media Industry, Fleet Tracking and Medical Industry etc. Currently she is working as a Project Manager, responsible for designing and developing end to end IT solutions. She had worked in the technical role for more than 10 years and still cannot resist the temptation to fix errors in a team member’s code. She is an MCA and a certified PMP. She is a passionate Project Manager, who would love to see a world where people acknowledge the work of PM's and would fully understand the significance of this role.

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Program Management Contribution to Business Process Reengineering By—Pawan Chhibba In today’s scenario where the business is capital intensive, highly volatile, customer centric and innovation driven its imperative that we look at the internal processes used to deliver the final product/ service to the end customer and offer a value with minimal cost and expected quality. Business Process Reengineering is the study of the internal processes and redesigning it to achieve various goals such as high productivity, reduction in redundant activities, minimal production cost, acceptable final product/ service quality and improved margins. Program Management by definition is the application of the knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a Program (Group of projects which are aligned to the strategic goal of the organization) to meet business requirements and to

obtain benefits and controls not available by managing projects individually. Program Management is considered to be one of the most sought after capability that an organization seeks to utilize in order to realize its Strategic Goals. The core deliverables of any Program - to deliver the product with minimum cost, within the acceptable quality limits and on time as per the agreed schedule - align with goals of Business Process Reengineering which also aims at improving the process to achieve high productivity thus minimize cost, improve process and product quality and reduce processing time in order to deliver results faster.

How to utilize program management concept for Effective process mapping? A phased and cross functionally aligned process, Program Management can help identify the current processes being utilized for project execution which can be further leveraged to prepare a Process Map of the existing setup. Procedure for Mapping a Process:

#1

#2

Identify the Deliverables required to transition from Idea to a tangible product/ service.

Identify the key stakeholders/ team members responsible for the activities.

#3

Review the activities for each of these deliverables (as identified in # 1) and create a detailed activity chart (or we may call it WBS – Work Break down structure)

#4

Do a time study i.e. identify the time taken for each of the activity and log it in a time sheet/ template. (any excel sheet template should do)

#5

Create a RACI matrix as given in Fig on next page, to align and map individuals to activities and subsequently to functional deliverables. 14

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#6

Once the above steps have been completed, review the RACI matrix and the deliverable sheet with the team members. This will help identify gaps which might exist in the current process in terms of role clarity among the team members, redundant activities, non value added activities etc.

#7

#8

The gaps that are identified in the # 6 along with the modified activity list becomes the baseline to work towards process reengineering.

The first step towards process reengineering is to involve the stakeholders from the process mapping process and conduct a brain storming session to identify areas of improvement.

#9

Once identified, couple of similar sessions must be utilized to kill those gaps to finalize process improvement areas

#10

#11

Based on the improvement areas identified the process can be improved and redefined by dividing the entire process into phases as is the case in Program Management Phase GATE process.

These Process phases can further be broken down into various stages which can tied to specific inputs, processes and outcomes as depicted in the figure below

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The reengineering activity should drive clarity on the at least following aspects to be effectively implemented: Activities expected to be executed at each stage/ phase; The inputs which would be necessary to complete those activities ex: Documents, Output of previous stage, Technical data sheets etc; The details of the process which should utilize these inputs and The final outcome or deliverables of each stage. This new process can be utilized to improve on the

performance metrics and also to establish an effective benchmark for Program Managers. This can help managers identify key stakeholders for projects, acquire clarity on the process, improve OTD (on time delivery) due to removal of redundant steps/ activities to achieve the deliverable, help minimize time to market, help reduce cost by effective utilization of resources by mapping the resources to activities and to activity duration which further helps in preparing resource loading charts (which can further be utilized for resource allocation) and improve process and product quality by ensuring control of the input and output/ deliverable at each stage. Hence Program Management’s contribution to Business Process Reengineering can help bring cross Take away functional awareness to teams specifically those who are part of knowledge intensive work like New Product Development. This awareness along with the new framework of a mix of process oriented and functionally oriented organization can be leveraged to innovate, improve productivity and move ahead of competition by providing cost effective solutions and offering value to customers.

Pawan Chhibba

He is a B.E (Electronics) and MBA (Marketing & Finance) from Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management, Delhi. He is certified from IIT Kharagpur on Telecommunication networks and is also has an E-Commerce certification from IBM. He is a Certified Internal Auditor from Confederation of Indian Industry for ISO9001:2008, ISO14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001:2007. He has been instrumental in successfully delivering various telecom network deployment projects and in his previous assignment as Project Manager he successfully lead a team which deployed entire telecom network for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Phase II Project.

About Author

Pawan Chhibba is currently associated with Ingersoll Rand as Program Manager. He has a diversified industry experience of more than 9 years in the field of Telecom Infrastructure projects and New Product Development.

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Governance By Shashank Neppalli

Governance is a regulatory system that shapes the actions of the members under its purview, through various laws and contextual frameworks that define the relationships shared by them. Applied at corporate level, it affects projects through its impact on the behavior of people. Its implementation is usually defined through processes, roles and responsibilities, and reporting structures. It is a time tested process to reduce costly resource inefficiencies that affect corporate bottom-line.

Best Practices Governance model must be customized to the projects at hand to enable better control over progress and improve profit through better resource utilization. Governance must be modeled on stakeholder theory and not shareholder theory. The financial objectives, based on which the model is selected, must have an extended time frame (5 /10 years) Contracts must be drafted between various governing bodies to reduce conflict of interest as well as to check moral hazard. Governance model must be created with orientation towards behavior and not outcome, if the objective of organization is to build long term value, and also consider projects to be temporary organizations from governance point of view. Governance decisions must be measured using balanced score cards to promote objective and impartial decisions. Governance model must insulate Project Managers from the over-bearing influences and high pressures of the steering committee to succumb to unrealistic goals and to prevent myopic operations from spoiling long term organizational prospects. The governance model should not entrust the steering committee or sponsor with a lot of decision making authority as it would create a skill bottleneck at the executing organization (project). It must therefore, promote alternative, middle order governance institutions like PMO to aid objective decision making. Level of governance must be in sync with the type of contract awarded. For example, fixed price contracts need low levels of governance effort whereas Cost plus contracts require high level of governance effort. Formal reporting between various elements of the governance system is recommended on a periodic basis to eliminate confusion and promote correct decision making. Project Governance shall be supported by a Good Project Management Information Systems (PMIS). PMIS must have agreed upon Metrics in order to have informed decision making for verifying the performance.

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Effect of Implementation of Best practices Best practices will ensure that Principal-Agency conflicts are at a minimum, which will result in faster decision making and greater value creation through elimination of resource wastage.

About Authors

Shashank Neppalli Shashank Neppalli is a Project Management Professional with demonstrated ability to plan and control, complex engineering projects. In addition to Planning & Monitoring, he possesses indepth knowledge of Material Management, Contracts Administration, Risk Analysis (Project as well as Credit Risk). He is fond of swimming, trail running and scrambling.

Self-Sustainability of Project Management Metrics PMO perspective By—Sarika Aggarwal , Nirmallya Kar & Sandeep Sethi

One of the greatest challenges for a PMO office is to ensure the sanctity of the data used to generate the metrics, which is viewed, reviewed and acted upon by the top management. In the era of knowledge based industry especially in the semiconductor domain , the role of the PMO office is not only limited to providing the methodology and infrastructure, but , also to ensure the sustainable deployment. By definition the mandate to the PMO office in the present era is to be lean and agile.

So to satisfy both the mandates, PMO office needs to go for innovative techniques in terms of process, technology and techniques. Keeping these in mind we came up with some innovative technique to ensure the self-sustainability of the PM Metrics. The guidelines used to define these are as follows: Simple to understand, use & extract No Jargons: Same language as of the user which leads to easy buy-in

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Ground scenario- Challenge The success and reliability of PM Metrics and tools depends on how much the data is correct and up to date. The output we get is a reflection of the input we put inside. Garbage In , garbage out. The challenge becomes two fold in an organization which has more and more technical background members moving to the role of project managers. Sometimes the Technical leaders are playing the dual role. For the Success and reliability of PM Metrics and tools, it is important to define indicators with the following key guidelines Enable assessment of product health dynamically Enable monitoring at any stage of the product life cycle Ensure completeness of the data Reflect business justification in order to implement and keep management motivated to push team to meet the parameters Provide sufficient information to enable PM & Management to take corrective actions

Provide evidence of how effective the corrective action is once taken The parameters must also relate to the existing quality compliance procedures. Case Study Case below shows how we were able to define Key indicators /Database Reliability checks within schedule management tool and ensure correctness of the data ,Paralelly, keeping the management engaged to push teams to ensure the schedules are always up to date and reflect the correct health of the product. Today with a census of approximately 1000 , we have a rich portfolio of 4279 total number of product s (since 2011) present in the schedule management tool of which currently 427 are active products across 40 product lines in 39 technologies in Category 1 51 active products in category 2 in 29 technologies 69 active SOC in 22 technologies, 7 test chips in 2 technologies Category 3 99.2% clean data according to DRC compliance report for the current week

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How Introduce Measurability by defining rules Step 1

Why : Draw an Analogy with existing work area of semiconductor domain of VLSI design flow.

In the semiconductor domain where the Rules (DRC= Design Rule Check) are applied to CAD design to ensure the success in the manufacturing

Step 2

Database Reliability Check (DRC) -> Mandatory

Step 3

Explain to the user community value add for each rule

Step 4

Specify the indicators 20

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Introduce target indicators

Target 0 Total Errors! 100 % of compliance products No of Errors/Number of Products in error = 0 (Density)

Normalized Error Density = Total DRC errors / Total Number of Products Percent of compliant products Total DRC errors

Establish reporting systems

Take away

By Introducing measurability to the health of the data which produces PM metrics through simple guideline we are able to make the PM Metrics self-sustainable and now the sanctity of the data is not questioned as a consequence the PM Metrics are taken seriously by the top management.

Sarika Aggarwal

About Authors

(Agree on weekly /monthly/ reporting)

Sarika Aggarwal is MSc. in Electronics and C o mmun i c a tion from DU. She is currently working as Program Manager , FTM /C C D S STMicroelectronics, G.Noida. She is responsible to Research, Define and Deploy Planning and Capacity Management Methodology for effective Portfolio Management within the organization. She is a Prince2 Registered Practitioner . She has plus 3 Years of teaching experience of University Undergraduates and 12 years plus of VLSI industry experience of which 5 years was focused on project management within design team and last three years as a part of PMO .

Nirmallya Kar Nirmallya Kar is an M.Tech from IITD. In his current responsibility as Section Manager, FTM/CCDS STMicroelectronics, G.Noida. He is responsible for Quality, Program Management and governance of Management Data in the PMO Department. He is also a Lead Auditor for ISO/TS at the site and certified IPMA-D project manager. He has approx. 17 yrs. plus of VLSI industry experience and since last 9 years has been handling the Project Management activity in Department with a strong interaction with site PMO office.

Sandeep Sethi Sandeep Sethi is a BE from DCE New Delhi. In his current responsibility as Sr. Group Manager, FTM/CCDS STMicroelect r o n i c s , G.Noida. He is responsible for the Methodology and Reporting of the FTM/CCDS worldwide, which includes Methodology, data governance and outsourcing activity in the PMO Department. He has approx. 20 yrs. plus of VLSI industry experience including managing team and IP developments and since last 6 years has been involved with the Program Management activity in FTM/CCDS.

He is also a trainer for basic & advanced Project Management, TQM courses at the site.

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Quantified Approach to Project Risk Assessment Models By Amit Kaushik PMP® Background

Amalgamation of two assessment models

Risk management is a systematic process of identification, analysis and response to the project risks, process comprising the risk identification, risk quantification, risk response plan and risk response control sub processes. Though all the elements of risk management cycle are essential but risk assessment is the most critical one. For the success of any project, it is inevitable to understand the stakes at risk and the probability of occurrence of the event which in turn depends upon a series of external as well as internal factors of the entity (business / process / project), for which the risk assessment is being made. It is essential to know and control as many of these factors as possible. Risk assessment is a preventive action planned for the known risks while unknown risks can be managed through a contingency plan.

Quantifying the Qualitative risks In certain scenarios where projects involve large number of applications, each having their own set of risk parameters or when the number of risk parameters in any particular application is very high, it becomes more effective if the qualitative risks are also evaluated quantitatively. This process of quantifying qualitative risks not only bridges the gap between qualitative and quantitative risk assessment methods but also gives as an end result numerical data and figures which are much easier to evaluate and represent in various graphical formats. This gives more efficient output that helps in better business decision making and project risk management. Practical application of Framework

Risk Assessment Models Qualitative Vs Quantitative Approach

Risk assessment can be approached from two directions with two assessment models: The qualitative model and the quantitative model. Through qualitative model, the prioritization of risks and their assessment is done on their probability of occurrence and impact. The definite characteristic of the qualitative model is the use of subjective indexes, such as ordinal hierarchy: heat map (low-medium-high), vital-critical-important, bench mark etc. On the other hand, through quantitative model, numerical results are sought to express the probability of each risk factor and its consequences on the objectives of the project. This can be done using techniques such as Sensitivity Analysis, Expected Monetary Value (EMV) or Monte Carlo simulation.

In one of the projects involving migration of 300+ applications, the concept of quantification of qualitative risks was evolved and utilized. As an end result the prioritization of application migration was based on the output derived from the framework. Key Elements Used in the Approach Identifying qualitative risk attributes critical and common to all the applications such as criticality, complexity, stability, usage etc. Defining and elaborating these attributes appropriately for clearly highlighting the risks being measured. Specifying evaluation criterion for each attribute and assigning a score for those criteria, keeping the score proportional to the impact of the risk attribute.

Always appreciate good and timely work. A word of appreciation work wonders. By—Sarika Mishra, IBM Noida

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Sample of attributes for risk evaluation

Subsequently, evaluating each application against these defined risk parameters and assigning a numerical rating for each resulting in a risk matrix of application, risk and ratings as below.

Project Management Advantages Applications could be categorized across Business units based on the common risk attributes. This gives an opportunity to evaluate risks in multi-dimensions Among various Business-units and for various applications within each Business unit. An assessment of the aggregate risk for a Business Unit can be done based upon the risks of individual applications combined together. Opportunity to represent it in the form of graphical charts such as pie chart depicting number of high/medium/low risk applications across a particular Business Unit. The bar graph below that represents the average scores of the applications across the Business Units giving an easy comparison chart. Considering the multifold advantages of the framework, it can be easily extended /

Risk

adapted across multiple processes and knowledge areas of Project Management. Extension of the same framework in Procurement area for selecting the appropriate product

Project Procurement Management includes the processes necessary to purchase or acquire products or services. The Plan Procurements process includes consideration of risks involved with each make-or-buy decision. It also includes reviewing the type of contract planned to be used with respect to mitigating risks, sometimes transferring risks to the sellers or product vendors. In this case, the decision of “Buy” was taken keeping the standard requirements and urgency of the delivery in mind.

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During this process, potential products were identified and the same framework was used to define the selection criteria. A score assigned to each criterion was kept proportional to the impact of the risk attribute. This selection criterion was further applied to choose the most appropriate product as per the requirements and risks associated with the project in Conduct Procurements process.

Under Conduct Procurements process, a detailed evaluation was conducted using the weight age system and a final rating was determined for all the products. As an output, a consolidated report with relative comparison of all the risk attributes used during evaluation of the potential products was derived. This framework provides a powerful mechanism to quantify the qualitative risks by elaborating and combining the similar risks and adopting the bottom-up approach to achieve the intended output. Also, addition of weightage system in this process, adds another dimension Take away to distribute the risks variably, based on the weightage of the attributes. As data gets converted into numbers, it can be better represented using various graphical methodologies. Keeping the flexibility in mind, this framework can be further extended to various other domains in the Project Management to take the well informed prudent decisions.

About Author

Amit Kaushik Amit Kaushik PMP®, ITIL V3 foundation certified professional, is currently associated with EXL Services Pvt. Ltd. as Senior Manager (Project Delivery) with 11+ years of industry experience in Enterprise and Business Solutions, Telecom, E-Learning and Embedded systems. He has an experience in the areas of Program / Project Management, Application development, Enhancement and BaU production support across diverse technology platforms. On educational front, he is B.Tech. (Hons.) from REC / NIT, Kurukshetra and MBA in Project Management. 24 Save your Earth!

PROJECT SPECIFIC PROCUREMENT STRATEGIES FOR BETTER PROJECT PERFORMANCE By Abhinav PMP® Procurement is the focus area today wherein transparency and fairness is of paramount importance. Recent 2G fiasco and defence deals have forced the Indian Government to formulate a public procurement bill to eliminate the menace of corruption in high value public procurements. In case of capital intensive projects, especially in oil & gas, procurement accounts for approximately 80% of the project cost. Traditionally, Project Managers in India do not consider procurement as an important integral part of the Project and their role comes into picture only after problems arise during proposal and post award stages. In case of capital intensive projects, the project completion time is normally based on the delivery schedule of the long lead critical items which are mostly high valued. So it becomes imperative for

the Project Manager to focus on the procurement strategy for these long lead items rather than be dependent only on the decisions made by procurement cell.

Project Managers should appreciate procurement as I propose to follow the transparent process in procurement, let's a cost and time saving strategy rather ask our kids to take out name of vendor on the occasion of family than simply a knowledge area in the day celebration. project management. Project ManagAt the time of crises, contract can be cancelled with the simple ers equipped with commercial knowlstatement that we were just "KIDDING". edge will not only improve transparency and fairness but also enable him to allocate cost and time saved during the process for faster execution and to minimize risks. Sourcing for materials is the major critical success factor for timely delivery of materials with best competitive rates and quality. Vendor development cell and Supplier relationship management (SRM) should be the key focus area for the success of procurement strategies as well. By - Piyush Govil PMP 25

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Comparison between traditional procurement system and project specific procurement system will provide an insight for better project performance management. Parameters Role of Project Manager Procurement team Procurement Statement of work (SOW)

Traditional Procurement System Passive Low on confidence Specifications are not often clear

Project specific Procurement system Active High on confidence, Empowered Specifications are Clear and Concise Project and Tender specific PreBid is mandatory for Critical items.

Contractual terms

Full of Superfluous terms. Pre-Bid not mandatory for Critical items.

Procurement procedure

Lengthy, based on some irrelevant old Guidelines and circulars issued by Organisations adding to lead time.

Project specific Simple and Easy to understand with relevant Guidelines and circulars.

Vendor Development cell

Not defined

Cost estimation

Based on Historical data

Plays an active role Based on Historical and market information

Delegation of Authority

Not sub-delegated for Project

Evaluation Criteria in Tender

L1 (Lowest Bidder) concept often results in overloading of bidder which will have cascading effect on the project schedule and cost.

Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)

Buyer is the Boss

Outsourcing

Outsource both Technical and commercial evaluation

Impact on Project

Scope creep, Cost and Time overrun

Risk Management

Risk is high as suppliers not concerned about project objectives.

Tender specify and rationalize the vendor list based on their shop floor loading, resource constraint , financial capability, and asks Vendor to quote accordingly and will have the flexibility for multi-sourcing if required. Consider supplier as Partner and ensure effective cash flow Outsource Only Technical evaluation if required and do in-house commercial evaluation. Provides Buffer for timely completion of project Risk is low as suppliers own the Project and there is always fallback plan or defined risk mitigation strategies.

Abhinav Abhinav is a certified Project Management ® Professional (PMP ), currently associated with Indian oil Corporations Ltd as Materials Manager (Projects). He has over 14 years of working experience, mostly involved in Procurement activities of IOCL-Mega Projects. He is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Bihar College of Engineering, Patna and done his Masters in Production Engineering from IIT, Delhi. He has also done a General management course from IIM, Indore. He has won the Gold Trophy in Hybrid Certificate Program on Project Management conducted by IOCL in association with U21Global, Singapore Views articulated in an article by author are based on his Project Procurement Experience.

About Author

Request for quotation (RFQ) based on project specific procurement strategies definitely will be a game changer in the area of procurement and will provide greater conviction and courage to the Project Manager for faster decision process thereby having a successful project execution.

Sub-delegated for Project

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User Intimacy for IT Managers By Anupama Awasthi As an IT project manager, you might have often heard that IT is far from the needs of business users. While on one hand IT teams deal with too much pressure chasing deadlines and trying to cope with delivery roadmaps, on the other hand this feeling from users is not far from the truth. The core reason is the relative pace at which the business world with its ever changing requirements is moving. Hence, just delivering what is asked for is clearly not enough for IT. User intimacy is playing a key role now and cannot be ignored. Referring to these five steps can help bridge the gap between IT and users. Know your customer – Do you know who your users are? How do they use your application? What is their experience of your application? It is extremely important to take proactive, sustainable steps to meet regularly with them, invest time to listen carefully to their feedback, setting up regular meetings in advance, blocking calendars will help. This will also make them feel that IT is ready to listen and keen in understanding their difficulties in using the application.

can be automated saving their time and efforts and hence simplifying their job. Hand hold for writing RFC’s (Request for Change) - It can be difficult for business users to precisely articulate their request in terms of what needs to be changed. If IT is present at time of writing the RFC, it will be easier for the expert to understand the requirement better and develop a solution accordingly. Deliver fast, exceedingly using agile mode – This is need of the hour. While IT has to follow proper cycle of first converting the user’s request into technical specifications, then designing, developing, testing and achieving user acceptance, and finally finding an appropriate deployment window, it can be very challenging if application has global usage and there is not a window of non-business hours long enough for deployment. Also, users always demand instant rectification, thus making the use agile mode instead of standard waterfall model ideal.

Celebrate the success together – Celebrating together is really important. It gives an opportunity to IT teams to hear from users directly how the enhancement has really helped them. It is very motivating to see how their efforts are directly impacting the internal or external customers. Do remember IT is an enabler of business Anupama Awasthi success in today's Anupama, is a senior management professional having world and only a comextensive experience in offshore outsourcing delivery bined effort of IT and model. Guiding and coaching delivery managers to manbusiness makes all the age complex projects having stakeholders spread across the global and working with different cultures. difference!

About Author

Provide proactive suggestions to improve their day-to-day life – This is about seeking automation opportunities which can use in their day-to-day activities. Users may not be aware that few tasks which they do manually

Her specialties include Client relationship management, Program management, Risk management, People management and IT outsourcing,

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Managing Agile Vs Traditional – what’s different? By Jitender Gosain PMP® Most of the projects nowadays are following agile or waterfall methodologies. So what is the difference in managing projects using these two streams? Let us find out. Overview Agile methodologies are based on the four core agile values (4C’s) which are stated as below: Customer collaboration or cooperation Change acceptance Commitment to the delivery based on the business value Communicating successfully or effectively The traditional or the waterfall process is a sequential or a step by step process which goes through distinct phases. These phases are ordered as follows. Requirements analysis Software design Build or construction Test or validation Release Maintenance or support

Project requirement management

Agile

Traditional

Requirements in agile are always refining. They Requirements are analyzed and well understood for are considered as DEEP (Detailed, Estimated, the complete project before starting or implementing Emergent and Prioritized). it. A customer first approves the requirements. A customer determines and advocates high prior- Team determines which requirement to build first as ity and ready requirements to be taken up in it- per the design. eration. Requirement changes can be suggested by the Requirement changes in the traditional methodology customer even during the iteration. are managed separately as part of the change manA customer has the authority and flexibility to agement process. suggest high priority and high value changes to team. 29 Save your Earth!

Customer management Agile processes are based on effective customer collaboration. In agile, customer is part of the development process and is aware of the team progress and impediments. The main reason why a customer opts for agile is that there is a greater visibility or transparency in the project work of agile as compared to the traditional development approaches. Agile

Traditional

A customer follows the agreed contract for the proAgile processes are based on the active customer ject. Implementation is guided as per the approved participation and collaboration. project plan. A customer interacts directly with the team and A customer expects that the deliverable for the prois an integral part of the implementation procject is achieved as per the plan. ess. A customer is aware of the team progress. There is a greater visibility or transparency in the project work, and hence, there is an increase in productivity and performance.

The progress is primarily judged as per key milestone tracking. A customer may not be aware of team issues or impediments.

Project planning Planning in agile is never finalized. Since change is accepted as a core of the process, plan keeps changing. The emphasis is always on the current iteration plan. The project plan is fully formalized and approved in the traditional process. Agile

Traditional

Planning in agile is continuous as there is willingness to accept changes. Agile planning follows the DIP (Daily planning – Individuals in team, Iteration planning and Project release planning) approach.

A detailed project plan is laid out in the beginning itself and approved from the customer. Traditional projects are easy to manage as a complete project plan is agreed upon initially itself.

The current iteration plan is agreed or approved The approved project plan is followed in each phase. at the start of the iteration. A customer always Key deliverable date is agreed and published to the has the authority to suggest changes to the high customer. business value items.

Team management Agile demands and suggests for having self-managed teams. An agile project manager (PM) assists the team in meeting the iteration commitment. The team has more authority and flexibility in agile projects as compared to the traditional-process-based project.

Always remember you cannot achieve anything without your team. You are what your team is. By—Sarika Mishra, IBM Noida

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Agile

Traditional

Agile teams are (supposed to be) self-managed, A PM guides the team as per the agreed project plan. empowered, and cross-functional. Project tasks are picked by the individuals in the team. Estimates are provided by the team and the team is aware of the iteration commitment. Each member has committed ownership. Team members need to have good experience.

Tasks are assigned as per the project plan. Ownership may vary depending on the role of a member within the team. The team follows the approved project plan. Team members can get trained on required skills for the project.

Changes in the team structure are restricted.

Team changes can happen as per the progress of the project.

Team productivity is highly demanding because Team has time to build the capabilities. of the short iterative nature and commitment. Teams always have a chance to inspect and Project learning's are captured only at the end of the adapt their performance and suggest changes. project. Team motivation, coaching, removal of impediTraditional PM has to lead from the front to successments, and assessing team health are central to fully guide the team in all aspects. the agile PM.

Risk management In traditional projects, risks are identified during planning stages and are managed throughout the project execution. Risk management in agile is challenging because of the short iterative cycle.

Agile

Traditional

Risks are identified as per the iteration.

Risks are identified during project planning.

Risks are considerably reduced as per iterative deRisks are high until release is done. liveries. Risks can be better managed by having an effective DoD (Definition of Done) which demands Identified risks are managed till the project release. from the team what is expected. Risk communication is part of standup meeting.

Never blame the team ...the mistakes and faults should be owned by the PM. Protect your team today and you will be protected forever. . By—Sarika Mishra, IBM Noida

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Best Engineering Practices Agile processes suggest the effective usage of the best engineering practices. These practices help in developing a quality product. Agile

Traditional

Most of the agile processes advocate the effective usage of the best engineering practices as agile development demands high performance and sound quality. Some of these practices are automated tests, waste removal, refactoring, and simplicity.

Traditional software development is guided as per the agreed plan and project triple constraints. The best engineering practices can be followed depending upon the project constraints (primarily cost).

Agile processes are value driven. Anything which is Wastes can be controlled only through effective not adding the value to the end delivery is considplanning (investment in quality). ered as a waste. Project tracking

Traditional projects are tracked as per their deviations from the approval baseline project plan. Agile projects are monitored based on current iteration goals and overall project status. Agile

Traditional

For current iteration, daily burn down report is used to track its progress. Deviation from the baseline is primarily used to For the overall project, a release burn down report is track the progress of the project. used.

Take away

Both agile and traditional methodologies have their own strength and weaknesses. Suitability criteria or exercise should be used prior to the deciding process for the project execution. What I have learnt is agile is a remedy for complex, urgent, and distinct projects.

Jitender Gosain

About Author

Jitender Gosain is currently working as "ManagerProjects" with Cognizant. He completed his MCA from Gurukul Kangri University Haridwar. He is having 12+ years of Software industry experience including 5 years in US. He has been involved in software projects for clients like Bank of America, Verizon, American Electric Power, Harcourt and American Express. His expertise includes Agile based project management. He is PMP, CSP, CSM and ITIL V3 foundation certified.

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Regulatory and Compliance Their impact on business operations and their value proposition By Rakesh Prasad PMP® Telecom industry has grown rapidly in the last decade with subscriber base touching almost 900+ Mn in India. This trend demands an increase in the number digits from existing 10 to 12 to meet exponential growth, and many changes such as TRAI’s (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) advisory on the new activation process, which means stringent verification process in place before a subscriber number can be activated. This not only brings enough prudence on part of services providers while enrolling customers, but also minimizes the misuse of numbers being allotted to customers without any documentation in place. However, this brings new challenges to the Telecom industry incumbents (or Telcos) and new entrants on the ever decreasing revenue. Much of these can be attributed to strict regulations and huge investment on 3G auction. Global telecom providers have to deal with laws that directly impact their businesses, both at home and abroad. Beyond that, they also have to deal with regulatory issues that impact their customers. They have to support those customers' requirements with respect to security, auditing and archiving. With the new Telecom policy that may be issued with the need to introduce number portability across PAN-India, subscribers will soon find easier to retain the service number irrespective of the location s/he moves to.

Impact For most Telecom service providers, regulatory compliance remains a key concern. With the advent of new technologies and in their bid to adequately deal with ever-changing regulatory landscape, Telecom providers in India are turning to building solutions in IT. Regulatory compliance drives Telcos to align business processes by building system controls, implementing security, increasing operational efficiencies, improving transparency and creating an effective customer service platform. It forces companies to rethink their business strategy and build effective management practices required for survival. Many of these regulations have an impact on the business processes practiced in the entire organization at all levels – from Executive down to Mid-level management. While Telcos continue to think of providing connections and content as a service, there is a need of emerging technology that integrates Machine to Machine (M2M), Near Field Communication (NFC) and Mobile Commerce service platforms. The presence of these services promise increased efficiency and high customer-centricity. However, the Telcos’ move into these emerging segments raise various challenges such as exposing regulatory and compliance risks, high infrastructure costs and lower Average Revenue per User (ARPU). The challenges are compounded by rising concerns among customers whose privacy in terms of personal data is breached. A study shows threats to customers arising from a range of environments.

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User perception of responsibility for Mobile security Following are some of the areas where organizations need to focus and implement regulatory compliant strategies : Build technical knowledge and skills required to identify challenges and address it efficiently and quickly Anticipate regulaAn Ernst & Young study finds that four out of five end users believe safeguarding their personal information is very important and that customers are concerned about areas such as targeted advertising, location-based services and third-party information sharing.

tory changes in advance

While most of the projects driven by TRAI ensure that Indian Telcos invest in IT and Network solutions, it also requires identification and a qualitative approach to perform risk analysis at the earliest phase of such projects. These projects have constraints in terms of completion date as laid down by the guidelines mandated by TRAI on behalf of the government. Regulatory compliance projects impacts the schedule of other projects planned earlier. Such transformation projects shifts down, set priorities of other projects as agreed with stakeholders within the organization.

Help create effective operations management strategy and reduce compliance risks

Achieve cost-effective balance between compliance and risk Engage an independent body which assists in implementing best practices followed in the industry worldwide

Ensure adequate controls in place to protect customer’s information Ensure adequate security measures to restrict the access and transmission of inappropriate content/ product through suppliers Conduct preliminary and post-implementation reviews of controls that have been identified and defined in the framework

Value Proposition upward trend. by nature and from one cus– Government,

Telcos in conjunction with TRAI need to play a vital role in defining the framework that is secured and less susceptible to fraudulence and terrorism. As a result Telcos need to work closely with government in defining their responsibilities clearly regarding content, data and anti-terrorism measures. References:

Rakesh Prasad

About Author

National security issues are on the The picture is further complicated scale of security concerns varying tomer segment to another segment Enterprise and Individuals.

Rakesh Prasad is a PMP®(Project Management Professional) with 17 yrs experience and has managed many OSS/ BSS projects as part of Transformation in Telco Domain. He has been associated with Aircel for last 4 yrs handling IT projects in Telecom. He possesses in-depth knowledge of Risk Management. Interests: Travelling, Reading, sports and watching classic Movies

http://www.datanetworksolutions.com/ netappcompliance2.pdf http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ Top_10_risks_in_telecommunications_2012

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Data analysis and reporting system for Excel spreadsheet users

Case Study

By - Apoorv Chaturvedi & Abhinav Chaturvedi

Construction and the real estate domain Working capital management is an extremely critical component for various construction proProblem jects. Delay in cash collections or reduced collections could result in a project running into losses or delay in the execution of the same. We are looking at helping builders address this problem on a turnkey basis using real time analytics. How is this aspect different from the Project management solution implementation? Collection from the clients for a builder could be independent of the start and the end dates for an activity. For example a builder might decide that a particular activity be done only when the cash has been completely collected for the activity or the builder might decide to go ahead with the activities irrespective of the collections. The collection dates for various activities within a project could vary depending upon the progress of the same. The Project Managers need to have a system to be able to work with adjusting the collection dates. The resources on the field are technically not IT savvy. They would require a system that is very easy to understand and use. Most of these resources are very friendly with Microsoft Excel. A system that is as close to MS Excel as possible needs to be designed. Even the data elements into the customized solution should be same as MS Excel spreadsheets data elements. The senior managers need to have real time visibility into the progress of the activities.

Benefits of the solution The following are the benefits of the solution (if successfully implemented): Real time visibility into milestone delivery for construction projects. Real time visibility into the accounts receivable situation. Real time visibility into the accounts payable situation. An error proof system of milestone tracking system. More time for the customer service department to collect the dues. More time for the Project Managers to adjust their schedule and resources based on the collections. More time and scope for the Project Manager to work with vendors and contractors in case they have completed their deliverables before time. Better cash management for the builder. This should lead to quicker project implementation. Description of the problem A number of builders are involved in a large number of construction projects. Such builders face the following common problems: Delay in capturing and analyzing the data such as milestone data, vendor quotations data and so forth. Such data is normally captured in MS Excel spreadsheets in difficult and complicated formats. The difficulty and complication could be due to multiple entries of the same data elements in the spreadsheets in different formats.

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Difficulty at implementing standard ERP and Project Management softwares such as SAP, MS Project and Primavera. This is due to the fact that the field sales people might not be comfortable using those interfaces. Also the operations of the client may need to be changed depending upon the ERP system been used. High licensing costs of the software specially the costs of Data entry licenses. Our approach is to design custom applications that service the following needs of the builders: Front end personnel do not have to change the data input format and methods of working significantly. People who work on MS Excel can work very easily. Many a times, clients are quite comfortable with their business processes. They don’t want to change them for the sake of ERP system. In our approach, the client can continue with the existing business logic. But if he does desire to change the business logic in the system at any time now or in future, it is very easy to adapt in the system.

on the field do not have high IT skill sets. Understanding the systematic processes involved in MS Project, Primavera implementation is difficult for these resources. High turnover of the resources on the field. Many of these resources frequently change their jobs. Hence training such resources on complicated software is an expensive proposition. Different methodologies of Project Managers: in a large firm, different project managers could have different set of methodologies that entail capturing different sets of information. High Data entry licensing costs of various standard software's Hence the capture of data from the field frequently takes place using Ms Excel spreadsheets, telephonic conversation, notepads etc.

The Manager can make any report or analysis which he wants to look at, without any expert help. The system will have ad hoc reporting features that is built into the system. In a normal ERP such a feature is to be purchased separately. The solution is very cost effective vis-à-vis standard ERPs: No software licensing costs Maintenance is easy Support at reasonable costs. Implementation cycle times are very short. What is the problem The following are some of the problems faced by the builders in capturing the information necessary for them to take appropriate decisions. The technical competencies of the resources on the field are low: many of the resources

How does the capture in MS Excel spreadsheets impede the functioning of the Construction firms? Manual data entry: this results in lost hours and high chances of error. Inflexible spreadsheet formats Limited scope for collaboration among multiple users. Lack of ability to audit the data within the spreadsheets. Lot of time is spent entering data within spreadsheets

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What are the implementation bottlenecks at the end client? High costs of implementation: these high costs include the costs of training, implementation and maintenance costs.

What is the critical factor in successfully implementing any Project Management system? Ease of usage for the end user: since the end user is currently using MS Excel spreadsheets, hence the solution that is made should be as close to the MS Excel spreadsheets as possible. If the person filling the project details finds the format very different from the one he is currently using then the implementation of the project systems could become difficult. Also the data in the developed system should be the same as in MS Excel spreadsheets so that the user could identify with the same very easily. Ease of access for the end user: the end user, who has to fill the data sets, should easily be able to access the online forms. If the online forms could be accessed using the mobile devices it shall be the best possible alternative. Easy availability of analytics for senior managers: the managers should get access to analytics in an easy to use manner. Interface with the ERP systems: A large number of firms have invested significant sums in ERP implementation. With the data that has been gathered from the field, it is important to interface with the given ERP system so that the transactional flow is seamless and very quick.

Low priority of Project systems implementations by the senior managers: for many firms the modules of Finance, HR, Sales and CRM are a higher priority. The budgets for the implementation of the same would have been marked for the year accordingly. The implementation of Project systems could come as a low priority.

High costs of end user licenses: if the project management systems are implemented on a large scale using the standard software such as Primavera and MS project, the costs of licenses would be very high. This could also add as an impediment to the implementation costs. The ROI (Return on Investment) of the Project systems implementation is not clearly defined: this does act as a dampener to the implementation of interactive Project systems on a large scale. Suggested course of action: the builder could adopt the following course of action to help solve the problem of getting project analytics. We suggest a 5 step process to help solve the above problem.

Soft skill polishes person's outlook towards others. By - Piyush Govil PMP® 37 Save your Earth!

Interface with the existing ERP systems: a bidirectional interface with the existing ERP systems should be developed. This should be done so that the builder gets complete benefit from the developed system.

Design an entry form as close to the MS Excel spreadsheets format as possible: this task shall entail designing data models from the existing MS Excel spreadsheets. The data models and the data entry forms need to be so designed so as to reduce the effort for data entry. The end user should find it easier to enter the data into the data entry form rather than use the current MS Excel spreadsheets. In this regards the following aspects need to be taken into consideration:

Design of KPIs(Key Performance Indicators) for senior managers: A systematic process should be developed for developing the KPIs for the senior managers. This should be done so that the managers get full benefits of the system that has been developed.

The historical entry of the data into the database should be in the same format as in the current MS Excel spreadsheets. Thus even the database entries should be the same as in the current project spreadsheets. The end user should not find any difference in data entries on current Ms Excel spreadsheets and the new system.

Design a reporting solution from the intermediate database: the data from the spreadsheets should be entered into a user friendly database. The senior managers who need immediate online access to the analytics from the intermediate database that has been developed. This should help in getting the managers quick reports at highly affordable costs. Also the managers shall be able to understand the business terminologies from the field personnel very quickly.

About Authors

A systematic method needs to be developed for updating the target milestones if the need arises for the builder.

Abhinav Chaturvedi Mr. Abhinav Chaturvedi has worked with top software firms such as Atrenta, Cadence in the field of VLSI design. He brings with himself extensive development experience of C, C#. He did his Electrical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering and MBA from University of California, Los Angeles.

Apoorv Chaturvedi Mr. Apoorv Chaturvedi brings with himself extensive Data warehouse and report development experience. He has the ability to map various disparate data sources including MS Excel spreadsheets onto relational databases. He can also help design best

in class reporting

solutions for the end clients. 38

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Fusion of Agile-Scrum to BDD Transforming agile to more agile

Article is about how can BDD (Behavior Driven Development) be used in SCRUM framework to make agile process more agile and effective

By Rajnish Kumar Chauhan tional behavior and also behavior of new requirements.

Agile methodologies are getting a lot of attention nowadays and organizations are keen to adopt the agile for software development.

If there are complex business rules and complex business scenarios, then risk of fulfillment of requirement goes up with each such business case, adding more risk of acceptance of final product.

Scrum is one of the most famous processes for agile software development.

This could cause rework and delay in final product shipment and a long product backlog.

It is assumed that readers have sufficient knowledge on Scrum agile process and terminology.

In Scrum, after defining the Sprint backlog the development activity, which is called Sprint, starts. One sprint usually spans from 24 hours to 30 days.

In Scrum, all requirements are listed in Product Backlog in a sprint planning meeting, on top the high priority and at the bottom the ones with lower priority are listed. Team members figure out how many items they can commit to and then create a sprint backlog, which is a list of the tasks to perform during the sprint.

In such a scenario it becomes very important to have clear understanding of requirements since development duration is less and there is very little scope to recover from any rework due to misunderstanding of requirements.

How to mitigate this risk? High Priority

Story1

Story1

Story2

Story2

Story3 Story4 Low Priority

Story5

Product Backlog SPRINT PLANNING

While an agile approach can be used for managing any project, Scrum is ideally suited for projects with rapidly changing or highly emergent requirements such as we find in software development. What is the risk? When requirements are changing fast, there is risk of misinterpretation of requirements and their func-

Sprint Backlog

How one can mitigate this risk and can fill the gap between team & product owner to have clear understanding of requirement/functional behavior to develop product as needed? Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) is perfect answer to this question . But wait …

What is this and how it can help? Let this article explains you.. BDD focuses on obtaining a clear understanding of desired software behavior through discussions with stakeholders. Behavior-driven developers use their native language in combination with the ubiquitous language of domain-driven design to describe the purpose and benefit of their code. This allows the 39

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developers to focus on why the code should be created, rather than the technical details, and minimizes translation between the technical language in which the code is written and the domain language spoken by the stakeholders e.g. business, users, stakeholders, project managers etc. Found this definition kind of language difficult .Let’s go into more details and try to understand it together. Consider the online-store application. User wants refund in return of defective product. Requirement from client is to return money to the user on refunding some article say phone. Ok, this is fine but what is needed to implement in software and how client will accept it? This is a very obvious question from development team. This kind of confusion happens because user & developer talk in different languages. Developer talks in technical way and user in their own language for a requirement thereby causing gap in understanding.

This is my new requirement

IF ( x > 89)then sysout(“…..”); Ok got it

How can it BDD be created so that client and development team are having same understanding. In BDD language the requirement can be described as:

WHEN user has bought a phone AND phone cost $100 WHEN we refund the phone THEN user should be refunded $100

BDD provides a platform to transform requirement into functional behavior .This results in better understanding of functional behavior of application to both client and development team. Development team knows what to implement and client knows what to do in acceptance testing. This was a summary introduction of BDD.

Where to plug-in BDD in Scrum process and where it can used during development ? And now the million $ question, where to put BDD in a scrum process ? This is a very important point to utilized the full power of BDD.

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The figure above shows all points where BDD can be plug-in to Scrum methodology.

stakeholders were involved when defining requirement, BDD documents become the valid document to discuss final product behavior in user acceptance. This provides a better visibility of what was required, why was needed & who has requested.

BDD

Stakeholders

Daily Scrum meeting Sprint Backlog

Story4

Story2

Sprint Re-

Sprint

Story1

Sprints

Story5

Let’s discuss how BDD will be useful on all points… At Product Backlog & Spring Backlog BDD will provide common ground & language to transform requirement into functional behavior in product backlog and to change functional behavior into technical specification for implementation. Daily Scrum Meeting Many times functional behaviors are related to each other and in software development, team members work parallel on functional behavior linked to each other. Development

How this fusion will benefit ….

Sprint

Shippable product

Sprint Meeting At Sprint meeting; Product owner , Development team & stakeholder come together and see a demo on what the team has produced.

misinterpretation

Transform requirement into functional behavior of the software

As requirements ( user stories )are interdependent ,therefore helps in avoiding any confusion among development team Spring meetings & daily scrum meetings are more effective

Rajnish Kumar Chauhan Rajnish is currently associated with ST Microelectronics as Application Group Manager. He has total industry experience of 8 years in complex custom applications development for ST internal use for semiconductor manufacturing unit and quality process automation . He shares his experience by writing regular blogs on Project management on the learning's from day to day job and reading different books.

As BDD is in place from Sprint planning and all 41 Save your Earth!

of

Development team is aware of User Acceptance behavior in advance for all user stories

Final Functional Behaviour

In daily scrum meeting, BDD will provide common platform to understand each of development activity and will avoid any confusion and knowledge gap to produce final product among development team.

Avoids user stories

Provide a common platform and vocabulary to understand requirement in a better Benefits way

About Author

Story1 Story2 Story3

New Volunteer Program Launch PMI North India Chapter has been working with various Government, Private and PSU organizations over last few years with all of our events being sponsored by them during this period.

Company Connect: To further promote PMI’s best project management practices amongst various stakeholders, provide additional volunteering opportunities for our chapter members, chapter board has launched Company Connect program on November 5, 2012 with following objectives: Chapter Outreach: Reach out to Government, Private and other type of organizations for advocacy of best Project Management practices Education: Educate members and potential members about PMI and the North India Chapter Membership: Encourage PMI North India Chapter membership in the organization Marketing: Develop & Share Chapter activities within the organization showcasing the benefits availed by being members of North India Chapter To meet these objectives, chapter is now initiating the process of accepting nominations for Company Connect program to appoint Company Connect Ambassadors (CCA). This program will be rolled out across various organizations, where NIC-CCAs (North India Chapter - Company Connect Ambassadors) will act as liasion between their respective organization and the Chapter Board. We may be appointing more than one NIC-CCA’s for an organization depending on its size and geographical presence. For any queries, please write to [email protected]

Region Connect: To further promote PMI’s best project management practices amongst various stakeholders, provide additional volunteering opportunities for our chapter members, and in-line with our commitment in last AGM; chapter board is pleased to announce launch of another unique program called Region Connect. This program will be connecting North India Chapter with the Project Management Professionals in the areas primarily outside Delhi – NCR region. The list of states in North India Chapter Geography is provided on the chapter website, (cities are shown for reference, please apply as per states mentioned in the list). Following are the objectives of this program: Chapter Outreach: Reach out to Government, Private and other type of organizations in the respective local geography for advocacy of best Project Management practices Education: Educate members and potential members about PMI and the North India Chapter Membership: Encourage PMI North India Chapter membership in the respective geography Marketing: Develop & Share Chapter activities in the region showcasing the benefits availed by being members of North India Chapter, and getting connected with PMI To meet these objectives, chapter is now initiating the process of accepting nominations for Regional Connect Ambassador (RCA) position. This program will be rolled out across North India Chapter Geography, where NIC-RCAs (North India Chapter - Regional Connect Ambassadors) will act as a liasion between the respective region and Chapter Board. We may be appointing more than one NIC-RCAs within each region for depending on its size, and scope / requirement of advocacy. For any queries, please write to [email protected] 42 Save your Earth!

Past Events An evening with IBM – “Managing Troubled Projects ”14th October;2012, Noida

Event was inaugurated by Mr. Ajay Malik (Project Services Leaders, Delhi IBM)). Ms Arti Chadha - Project Manager IBM presented the case study on Managing Troubled Projects. Panel Discussion on Managing Troubled Projects was powered by panelist Mr. Ajay Malik (Project Services Leader, Delhi IBM), Mr. Ravi Ruhela (Manager, Project Services, Delhi – IBM), Ms. Shalini Lamba – Independent Project Consultant, Mr Vijay K. Verma (Manager, Project Services, Delhi IBM) moderated the panel discussion. Approximately 100 plus attendees comprising of chapter members and IBM employees enjoyed the session. Special thanks to Mr. Ajay Malik and Mr. Vijay K. Verma from Team IBM assisted chapter in arranging venue with all security clearances and High Tea sponsorship. Mr. Amit Agarwal Vice President – Program was the chapter SPOC for this event. Two Chapter volunteers Mr. Naveen Singh and Ms. Shalini Lamba managed the registration desk.

IBM Team

Registration

Desk

in full swing Panel discussion

PMI North India Chapter AGM – 14th October’2012 On 14th October, chapter conducted its Annual General Meeting one of the most important gathering for chapter members. Chapter Board with all portfolios presented the achievement during the period of January 2010 till October 2012. Preparations for the AGM has been started a month back with Chapter by Laws approval from chapter members. To amend the chapter By Laws online voting was conducted with a time period of one month before the Annual General Meeting. As per the amendment approval requirement minimum 10% members required to vote and out of that 2/3 of voting members required to approve the changes. Chapter Bylaws where approved by more than double votes as per the minimum requirement. Chapter board thanks its members for over whelmed response on the amendments.

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Past Events Besides that NI Chapter has also been involved in following activities for advocacy of Project Management best practices in the region and beyond:

Alcatel-Lucent IPM Day through their Chennai Office The Alcatel-Lucent Project Management Community observed the International Project Management (IPM) Day on 1 November. This was the sixth edition of the annual event. This year Mr. Jayant Malhotra - VP Schlumberger, our chapter member was one of the guest speaker for the virtual event for the Asia-Pacific region, which was attended by over 185 employees from 15 countries including China, Japan, Australia, Singapore, and India through a live webcast and meeting. The same event was delivered last year also by PMI North India Chapter with our Chapter President – Manoj K Gupta presenting on behalf of North India Chapter .

Faculty Development Program for Amity University On Project Management

We also delivered the above program using members and external faculties for Amity University on behalf of PMI India in Noida earlier this month. Amity Academic Staff College, in association with Amity Institute of Information Technology and PMI India, organized a five-day refresher course for project managers. A total of 29 participants from Amity University attended the training. A three-member team with our chapter president delivered the entire training that acquainted the participants with PMI concepts such as project management framework, product lifecycle, and organization structure, project man-

agement process for a project and mapping of these process areas with project knowledge areas, and project scope, time, and cost management. The participants gained insights on developing analytical frameworks, communication techniques, and strategic planning skills, and increase their managerial insights that will ensure projects are completed on time, on budget, and within scope besides getting hands-on exposure on tools like MS Project. Initial presentations were done by Vivek Shaily (PMI India) and Manoj K Gupta (PMI North India Chapter), followed by sessions from Ananya Das, Vineet Sardana and Pratyush Akhauri .

Program on Project Management – Risk Management for 25 PSU’s through MOSPI Earlier last week we have also delivered a program on Risk Management for 34 PSU officials in Ministry of Statistics & Program Implementation from 25 different PSU’s. Program also gave them exposure about PMI North India chapter, activities being done by chapter and areas of collaboration between PSU’s and NI Chapter. Session was delivered jointly by our Chapter President and Hemant Siegell, chapter member of NI Chapter and the program was very well received and appreciated by participants. These participants represented organizations like AAI, HLL, NTPC, IOC and others. 44 Save your Earth!

Avail PMI Economic Exception Scheme; renew your membership now at reduced rate. Hurry!

Hemant Seigell

Abhijit B. Kumar

Prashant Malhotra

Nitin N Singh

Editorial Team welcomes Articles, Case Studies, White Papers, etc. for their ongoing endeavor.

Nirmallya Kar

We always welcome suggestions or ideas for improvement. Kindly submit at

Pooja Gandhi

[email protected]

Kumar Saurabh

Manoj Gupta

Piyush Govil

Team Editorial

Disclaimer: “The views and opinions expressed in all articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of PMI - North India Chapter and Editorial Team"

PMI North India Chapter http://www.pminorthindia.org [email protected] 45

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