IIL s International Project Management Day, 2007 The Power of the Profession:

Transcription

1 IIL s International Project Management Day, 2007 The Power of the Profession: A Lesson Learned and Solution Implemented Becomes a Best Practice in Project Management by Tresia Eaves, PMP IRS RGS Project Manager & VP, Technology Integration Group SENTEL Corporation (A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of WC Holding Inc.)

2 Agenda Background about SENTEL, the speaker, and the customer environment with project information to set the scene Lesson Learned discussion about what could be improved and how it was identified Solution how the challenge was overcome and a solution was implemented Best Practice how the solution was rolled out as a best practice across the PMO and/or organization

3 Background, the company (1 of 2) About SENTEL Corporation SENTEL is an engineering services company that develops, tests, implements, and supports innovative technology that solves business problems and delivers benefits, improves defense, enables communication, and protects lives Founded in 1987, SENTEL has garnered numerous awards for its work. The company currently has about 400 employees located all over the world

4 Background, the company (2 of 2) SENTEL was assessed as a Level 3 software development organization in accordance with the Software Engineering Institute s (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in November of 2005 Progressing to Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI), Level 2, in early 2008

5 Background, the speaker About the speaker: Tresia Eaves, MHR, PMP RGS Project Manager and Technology Integration Group Vice President 15 years of Product Engineering experience Experienced with Commercial and Defense projects Chairman of the Board for the PMI Information Systems Specific Interest Group (This is a group of nearly 14,000 information technology and systems professionals throughout 100 countries--

6 Background, the project Large software project for a government agency Includes 2 million lines of code, 52 separate executables, and used by 26,000 employees Development team includes a total of 30 engineers, 20 agency employees, and costs about $5 million per year maintain SENTEL has worked onsite for over 6 years with the agency to deliver by February of each year

7 A Lesson Learned, the challenge In 2001, there were problems with: Ineffective process for developing schedules and determining the scope of work Lack of a process to baseline requirements Weak estimation process Problem collecting data for tracking estimates v. actual delivery metrics No tracking of earned value Strained customer relationship (although selected, there was little confidence in outside contractors by the customer s team members)

8 Solution: An Improved Estimation Process (1 of 3) Estimates based on measurable scope lead to reliable, manageable schedules and on time/on cost deliverables Implemented a process for assignments for estimation tasks (using government acquired tool set) Assigned engineers who estimated all work: analysis, design, implementation, testing, peer reviews, and coordination

9 Solution: An Improved Estimation Process (2 of 3) The initial data is used to build a draft schedule which is socialized and committed to by all customer groups Weekly data feeds (via custom script tool) into the schedule This allowed instant transparency into the status of the critical path, budgeted cost of work performed, actual cost of work performed Allows the project manager and customer to gauge and report project health

10 Solution: An Improved Estimation Process (3 of 3) Also affords the project manager the agility and turn on a dime capabilities needed when the project must include late-breaking requirements changes (that are inevitable) determined by legislative actions risks that are only mitigated with effective planning, timely information from Capitol Hill, and resource reserves

11 This is a screen shot of our ClearQuest tool and shows how the states, estimates, and actual data feed into the MSProject schedule via a script:

12 Solution to Best Practice Significant decrease in the number of late deliveries-- by 100%: there have been no late deliveries for 3 years Reduced number of iterations to deliver final release version from 20+ in 2001 to 4 in 2007 Overtime has been reduced by 75%; saves hundreds of thousands per cycle Improvements to the quality of this project s deliverables allowed customer to meet and exceed their goals which saves taxpayers millions of dollars Used as an example by SENTEL, government customer to other vendors and IT groups and implemented where possible across the organizations

13 Summary Power of the Profession: An educated, experienced, and professional project manager can use their skills to completely change a project for the better. This was the case for this project and as a result, SENTEL was awarded a second 5-year contract with this customer in late 2006.

14 Questions and discussion