March 18, 2014
Agenda
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Welcome & Introduction
Congratulations to our newest Credential Holders
Welcome to newest PMI Metrolina members
Volunteer of the Month
Volunteer Opportunities
Corporate Partnership
PDU Opportunities
Upcoming Events
Speaker Presentation
Closing
Congratulations to our Newest PMPs!
Olufemi
Jenna
Charles
Joshua
Caroline
Amy
David
Mike
Heather
John
Holly
Peter
Aborisade
Ackerson
Asmus
Ayers
Johnston
Kolovich
Lownds
Mostaghni
Pees
Stone, Sr.
Thomas
Zelinski
Welcome to the Newest Chapter Members!
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Utkarsh Ahuja
Jacob Ajayi
Jeffrey Antman
Sharonda Aplon
Joseph D. Arancio
Alfredo Azpurua
Ramesh Babu
Peter Barclay
Butch Barksdale
Sadrita Barnes
Pamela Baskins
Jana Beyo
Kisha Bibb
Kyle Andrew Black
Bryan A. Blair
Boutros Magdi Boutros
Ross Brigman
Scott Brooks
Andrea Bruno
Bryan Chun
Trista Collins
Barry Cox
Daniel Curlin
Nancy Faith Daborowski
Tejinder Datt
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Michelle de Beus
Donald DeBouse
Crystal Duprey
Desmond Duru
Victoria Eastwood
Zaher El Ali
Inas Eldewek
Beatriz Escobar
Mark Fawcett
Sandy Fischer
Steve Frank
Ryan Gabel
Angela S. Gabriel
Stephen Paul Gould
Stephen Graybill
Natasha Green
Lisa Harwell
Christopher L High
Kathleen Hohenstein
Aaron Holcomb
Donald L Hunley
Christopher Hyland
Tiffany Jamison
Duval Johns
Michael Lawrence Julius
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Ryan Kehoe
James Keirstad
Scott King
Jeffrey Knight
Christopher Lancaster
Jenny Linger
Daniel W Little
Anthony Lugo
Vito James Macioce
Kevin Malvey
Paulo Marques
Mary S Martin
Clare Yuping-Fan Miller
Helder Meneses
LaTonya Middleton
Mark Morton
Aparna Narayanan
Mariama Ndong
Leah Neely
Mark Nicasio
Chaitanya Parkhi
Patrick Parson
Anand Patel
Jessica Patton
Jim Perkins
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Rebecca Phillips
Jeremy Puzycki
Brady Readling
Diana Register
Dawn Rennick
Fabio Rincon
Rosanne Rodriguez
Bruce Rogers
Scott Roosa
Timothy Schneider
Christie Sears
Bradley Sullivan
Susan Talton
Cyrus Taheri
Holly Thomas
Theseia Tribble
Rich VanKoughnett
Yatish Vora
Troy Weatherford
Brian White
Adam Winters
Kelli Woodward
Robert Wright
Judene Wright
Volunteer of the Month
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Dan Travieso works with
the Communications Team
on the chapter website.
Dan is a PMP, PMI-RMP
and Lean Six Sigma
Sensei.
He has also been a speaker
for both the Fayetteville
and Wilmington satellite
meetings.
Volunteer Opportunities
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Writer/Researcher/Proofreader - Content creator,
researcher and proofreader for Monday PDU
Opportunities Email, Monthly Newsletter, website and
other special duties assigned. For more information about
this opportunity, contact John Schneider at
vpcommunications@pmi-metrolina.com
Corporate Partnership
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Networking Partners
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Web Partners
PDU Opportunities
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Satellite Meetings
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Next Chapter Meeting
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March 20 – Concord
March 25– East Lake Norman
March 27– Hickory
March 27– Mint Hill
April 8 – Southwest Charlotte
April 10 – West Lake Norman
April 15
Community Service
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March 22 - 2014 Rotarians Against Hunger Initiative (Asheville)
Upcoming Events
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PMP Prep Class
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Partner Offerings
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September 27
PMI Global Congress – North America
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June 23
August 25
Professional Development Day
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April 26 – Microsoft Project & Microsoft Visio
Skill Fest at Bubble Charlotte in the Epicenter
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Determining Business Requirements – March 18
Leading Six Sigma Projects as an Engineer – March 19
Lean Six Sigma Boot Camp starting March 24
Gathering & Documenting Requirements – March 25
Saturday PDUs
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Starting April 5
October 26-28
International Project Management Day
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November 6
Speaker Presentation
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Tom Gray, MBA, PE, PMP, CSPO, CSM
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Tom is a resourceful management professional with diverse operations and program
delivery experience in business applications, manufacturing and technical products
and services. He is a highly organized business strategist with the ability to effectively
communicate with diverse personalities.
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"I built my reputation of being a hands-on leader willing to work shoulder to
shoulder with the team to achieve the objectives of the business but my real
value is my ability to empower a team to own their work and perform to their
highest potential." - Tom Gray
Lessons Learned
A conversation between project managers
at Future Learning Company
Presented by: Tom Gray, PMP
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
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(KELLY) “That database conversion project for Sales was the worst experience
ever!”
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(STEVE) “Yeah, with all of the changes and then the arguments about the way
the U/I screens were designed, I was glad when the project ended.”
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(KELLY) “Just exactly when did it end because I’m still getting requests to make
changes?”
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(LANDON) ”I thought Sales finally agreed to use the U/I ’as is’ until they can
clarify what they want. So who is asking for changes?”
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
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(KELLY) “Marketing is complaining because some of the legacy data fields are no
longer supported and Customer Support is complaining because they can no
longer look up volume discount information to assist customers. No one is
organizing or reviewing requests so it is very frustrating.”
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(STEVE) “This project was requested by Sales and was not supposed to impact
anyone else.”
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(KELLY) “Well apparently the database was more widely used than we thought. I
learned that besides Marketing and Customer Support, the Purchasing Group and
HR are also using it.”
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
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(LANDON) “So are you making any changes?”
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(KELLY) “I’m assigned full time to two other high priority projects and my
boss told me to ignore any other requests. But people from all groups
seem to think that if they tell me to make the changes it will get done.”
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(STEVE) “If you’re not running that project then who is?”
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(KELLY) ”I don’t know. I’ve seen no communications in over two weeks.”
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
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(LANDON) “Jim from Accounting said that project was way over budget
and Terry in Sales says that no one has been trained on it and many
people are still using the old database which remains operational because
of errors in the legacy data conversion.”
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(KELLY) “I’m getting heat from everyone and this project may tarnish my
image.”
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(STEVE) “You did remember to document everything as part of your
‘Lessons Learned’ so that you could use it on future projects didn’t you?”
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
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Does this sound familiar to you?
If you were Kelly what would your Lessons Learned include?
A conversation between
project managers at
Future Learning Company
A few suggestions to get started:
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Stakeholder Identification
Requirements Specification and Approval Process
QA Validation
Scope Control/Change Control
Project Sponsor/Owner
Resource Scheduling
Training
Risk Mitigation
Project Closure
Communication
STAKEHOLDER IDENTIFICATION
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Verify that Stakeholder Identification occurred.
Even though Sales was the requesting group it is now obvious that the database was more
widely used within the organization. The database may also interface with external sources
including suppliers and/or customers, other business operations such as sister companies or
partners.
Stakeholders include all parties impacted by the project; those who support it and those that
oppose it (if they exist). In this case it includes Sales, Marketing, HR and Purchasing
departments and all individuals within these groups that will be required to operate the
system or those who get information from it. A loss of legacy data points could create a
negative stakeholder (Marketing in this case) as noted earlier.
(Clarification) Stakeholders include anyone that is impacted by or has an interest in the
efforts/results of the project.
REQUIREMENTS SPECIFICATION
AND APPROVAL PROCESS
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Verify that detailed requirements exist.
Verify that an approval process for the requirements exists and has been executed.
It appears that someone within the Sales group is not happy with the implementation of the
U/I (User Interface). This could be attributed to a deficiency in the detailed requirements
specification, a lack of a final approval process to clarify what will be built or it could indicate
that the deliverables did not align with the approved requirements. If the team failed to
deliver according to the requirements this may indicate a lack of proper QA validation.
In this example it is not clear what the root cause is for the Sales group’s dissatisfaction. A
review of the approved requirements and assessment of the U/I should provide clarification.
QA VALIDATION
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Verify that QA Validation was part of the process
If the deliverables do not match the approved requirements then some
changes within the QA validation process are required. All project
deliverables should be validated to insure alignment with the business
requirements. Having QA involvement from the beginning of the project
could identify any potential deviations before any physical work is started.
Corrective action is least expensive in the beginning of the project.
SCOPE CONTROL/
CHANGE CONTROL
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Verify that a Scope Control/Change Control process is in place.
Continuous changes throughout a project may indicate that the scope
control/change control process is not working properly.
Change requests do not equate to changes implemented. Critical changes
may need to be accommodated; some may require scope trade-off to avoid
unnecessary scope bloat, which can result in cost over runs and schedule
delays. Other requests may be recorded for future updates while others are
rejected.
A project without an effective Scope Control/Change Control process is
likely to fail.
PROJECT SPONSOR/OWNER
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Has the Project Sponsor/Owner been identified?
Is there a process for properly channeling change suggestions for approval?
The Project Sponsor/Owner should always be aware of change requests that
are being made by others and they should have the authority to approve or
reject requests as they deem necessary. After all, they are funding the work
and will be responsible for being good steward’s of the company resources.
The project manager is fielding requests directly from all departments and
there appears to be a lack of adherence to proper process.
RESOURCE
SCHEDULING
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Kelly clearly is assigned to other projects. Other resources may or may not
be available and/or assigned to continue work on this project.
Since Kelly was the project manager on this effort he should have the
resourcing information.
TRAINING
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Is there a training plan?
Confirm the status of the training delivery and if no training has been
provided, determine what approval processes were bypassed allowing the
new database to go online without proper user readiness.
Training must accommodate all users of the system across all departments
impacted, not just the Sales department.
RISK MITIGATION
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Have risks been tracked, assigned for review and mitigation plans
documented?
The following Risks have been identified in the conversation:
 Continuous changes requested from various sources without proper
channeling
 Issues with the U/I exist
 Stakeholders may not have been fully identified
 New and legacy databases operating simultaneously, data migration/data
loss
 Also - System Errors, Resourcing, Budget, Training, User Adoption and
Communications
PROJECT CLOSURE
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Is there a formal project closure process?
Has the formal project closure (sponsor acceptance and sign-off) occurred?
Does some confusion exist as to the completion of the project?
Have resources been officially released from the project?
Have lessons learned been captured and post mortem reviews taken place?
COMMUNICATION
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Verify that Communication process/plan is in place.
All three Project Managers seem confused about the status of the project
which could indicate that communications have been less than adequate.
Continuous arguments about the product deliverables raise the question
about sufficient communications and the setting of expectations to the
stakeholders.
Confusion on this project could be reduced and/or remedied by improved
communications.
COMMUNICATION
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Suggestions for improved communications include:
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Communications restating the process for change requests
Announcing project completion
Communicating Kelly’s new reassignments
Publish the time-line for the legacy database shut-down
Communicate the training schedule for the new system
Communicate the benefits of the new project and system
Communicate future updates to the system, including scope and timing
Continuous communications as part of a project’s transformation and change
effort should be employed. Consider using surveys, tips, request for feedback,
success stories and examples, sponsor testimonies, etc.
WHY USE LESSONS LEARNED?……
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Better preparation and organization increasing project success
More reliable requirements and clearer implementation
Improved Risk identification/awareness based on past experience with the
same people and organizations
Professional credibility (Establishing and maintaining)
Others?
Conclusion and Q&A
Closing