Journyx Project Management Blog

In this article, I will try to tell you a way you can tackle one aspect of a project—software estimation. I will tell you how I estimate projects and the geometry involved, and if unfettered by poorly judged external forces this way leads me to a successful delivery. But, the most important thing is that these are general guidelines and there is simply no substitute for individuals and teams that can succeed in their own way. Individuals and individual teams must be permitted to use their own judgment, for there is no more desirable outcome than a delivered and well received product. (Until software becomes an assembly-line process and by then, God willing, I’ll be horizontal.)

Geometry

Geometry applied in the context of software development project estimation refers to the size, shape, and relationships among all of the elements of a software project, including those practices whose direct result are tangibles and those time slots that are essentially intangible but necessary in some way. Many estimators get some of the tangible parts of estimation correct, but it is all of the intangible aspects that are often overlooked and result in delays, disappointments, and undelivered software.

Tangible elements (often called deliverables) can include project plans, requirements, detailed designs, the software, and time spent testing, debugging, documenting, and launching software. Many people know about these elements and some include these elements in estimations. Sadly, some do not include all of these elements. Intangibles such as water cooler time, illness, bad requirements, wrong requirements, changed requirements, unforeseen hard bugs in your code or the tool provider’s code, learning, white board time, unit tests, arguments, meetings, distractions, failed or replaced hardware, absenteeism, car accidents, sustainable productivity levels—getting in and staying in “the zone”—reading FoxNews.com, checking out research.microsoft.com and more, are all too often overlooked, dismissed, or denied. But, these are the elements as likely to happen as coding that chew away at the schedule, willingly or not, and is what is most often overlooked in a project schedule. To account for the tangibles, methodologies like RUP were invented. To account for intangibles, methodologies like XP and Scrum were invented. But, again there is no substitute for having people who have demonstrated an ability to deliver.

Tip: Software projects that succeed often have a single-minded determination and focus on the number one deliverable, the software.

Read the entire article at Developer.com.

Once again, our CEO Curt Finch will have the unique honor of being a featured speaker at the PMI Global Congress - North America. This year, the Congress takes place in Atlanta from October 6-9, 2007.

The Great Curtini will be presenting Web 2.0: The Future of the Internet and How it Affects You as a Project Manager. The presentation will show you how successful companies are utilizing the power of the Internet and what technologies are considered critical to the future of the web. Curt is scheduled to appear at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, October 9th.

In addition to Curt’s prognostications, Journyx representatives will be on hand at Booth 124 throughout the entire conference to provide demonstrations of Journyx Timesheet™, the cornerstone of the Journyx Per-Person/Per-Project Profitability (P5) Protocol. Stop by the booth to learn more about P5 and how it can help you go from Chaos to Order.

As an added bonus for our readers, we’re offering free passes to the Exhibition Hall where you can see demonstrations, hear from industry experts and try out new products. So if you’re going to be in the vicinity and would like to get inside, drop us a line at marketing@journyx.com and we’ll hook you up. As the kids like to say, that’s how we roll.

Learn more or register at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pmi07.html

While at the Agile 2007 Conference a couple of weeks ago, a project manager from a small development shop tracked me down and asked me the best way to organize their development organization. Not being a big fan of the word “best” (what works really well in one situation is quite average in another, hence making “best” very context-specific) I threw out my standby consulting answer: “It depends.” Then I asked some questions about their organization and what kind of work they typically do. Based on that, I provided them with some context-specific suggestions.

Afterwards, I thought that there are probably others who have the same question. So, given the caveats listed above, here are some thoughts on how to organize your organization to undertake development projects.

Since I can’t possibly know under what conditions readers of this article are working, I thought it best to describe some general characteristics usually exhibited by successful project teams, and provide ideas for adopting these characteristics…

Understand your lineup at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pcon-vflead.html

Journyx will be attending the 2007 Austin InnoTech on October 11, 2007. InnoTech is the region’s largest technology and innovation conference, bringing together over 1,300 business and technology professionals from Central and Southern Texas. Attendees include business owners, corporate executives, IT professionals and technology executives from all types of corporate, government (local and state) and educational institutions. Stop by and visit with us at Booth 104.

Additionally, Journyx CEO Curt Finch will be a panelist at the Open Source Technology for Government and Non-Profit Agencies discussion at 2:30 pm in Meeting Room 14. For more details see the InnoTech website.

Find out more or register at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/innotech07.html

Over the last few months, we have again seen natural disasters strike around the world, including earthquakes, fires and floods. In addition to the human lives lost and affected, these events have also had significant impacts on local and regional economies and on the projects and project management profession in those places. This month, as we pass the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in the United States, we find that thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi residents have not returned to their homes, cities and towns have not been rebuilt, and local and regional economies have not recovered.

In Darfur, Iraq, Somalia and other conflict zones around the world, rebuilding has gone slowly or not occurred at all. Lack of security and continued conflict have hampered rebuilding efforts. But according to news reports and governmental audits, corruption, bad contracting practices, poor project management and lack of oversight have also been major problems. In my opinion, these last four issues are clearly within the realm of professional project management, suggesting that those in charge have either not been serious about PM or have not known enough about project management to take advantage of its power. It is now time to take action…

Learn more at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pmwt-disaster.html

Our fearless leader and CEO Curt Finch continued on his virtual book tour last week, stopping by Raven’s Brain for a chat about time tracking, project management and other business and technology issues.

Raven’s review of All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource can be found here. Her interview with Curt can be found here.

Keep up with the tour, read reviews or take a business assessment quiz at the official website, TimeTrackingBook.com.

10. Selling his/her house to be closer to the new job.

9. Buying stock in her/his new employer’s company to demonstrate commitment.

8. Failing to understand that PMO stands for “Project Managers are Opposed.”

7. Believing what was said about senior management commitment during the interview process.

6. Believing what was said about the skills of the PMO staff during the interview process.

Read the entire list at Project.

Your risk management process allows you to evaluate and respond to high-level project risks. Some of these risks involve project resources and require that you consider ahead of time how you will respond if you need to replace or add resources. In fact, in some cases, you must actually plan ahead to understand what the contingency resources look like and how you’ll get them if they’re needed. This contingency planning could affect either labor or non-labor resources. Here are some examples of where you should plan ahead.

Personnel

On many projects, if you find that work is taking longer than you anticipated, you might have the flexibility to ask for additional time and budget. However, if the deadline date is critical and can’t be moved, you may not have time to look for new resources to get back on schedule. Likewise, if a member of your team leaves, you may need to find a replacement in very short order.

When deadlines are firm and the project deliverables are critical, you need to have some plans in place for finding resources when needed. For example, let’s look at the YR2K projects of a few years ago. If you were entering the final six months of 1999 and needed more resources, you would not have time to spend three months finding people. You should already have had a plan for acquiring resources on short notice. This may have meant having employees or contract people in reserve to allow you to make staffing changes quickly.

Read the rest at TechRepublic.

Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx, has recently published a brand new book entitled All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. In honor of its release, Curt has embarked on a virtual book tour in which bloggers review his book and interview him.

The first stop on the blog book tour was at Blog Business World. Owner Wayne Hurlbert interviewed Curt on his radio show, Blog Business Success.

Wayne’s review of the book can be found here. His 60-minute interview with Curt can be downloaded here.

Keep up with the tour, read reviews or take a business assessment quiz at the official website, TimeTrackingBook.com.

You threw what you thought was a pebble into a pond and created ripples that have your conference rooms awash with disagreements, debates and dissension. The new strategy seemed simple enough: Transition to a common system across all operating units in order to enhance supply chain performance. The decision process to select the common system was pretty straightforward, but now everyone’s lobbying for functionality and schedule change that are putting the overall initiative at risk.

Decision making in IT is pretty messy. By definition, integration and standardization are at odds with quick, customized delivery. As a result, in most organizations the interests of the enterprise take a backseat to the more immediate need to improve business alignment and partnership. Within IT, this conflict is internalized, and conference rooms and offices are filled with well-intentioned applications, architecture and infrastructure professionals questioning each other’s motives.

In the heat of the battle, there’s little that can be done other than ensure that the meetings are productive and the right decisions are made. In his 2006 Harvard Business Review article, “Conquering a Culture of Indecision,” business strategy expert Ram Charan identifies behaviors that help ensure decisive dialogues:

* Close meetings by articulating who will do what by when and require attendees to communicate the decisions to their organizations within 24 hours.

* Arrange for the right people to be involved in the discussions and promote open discussion by generating alternatives and assigning devil’s advocates to say what others may be thinking.

Read more at CIO.com.