Best practices are a critical success factor for project success

1. NINE BEST PRACTICES OF
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
1
The difference between failure and success is the difference between doing something almost right and
doing something right
— Benjamin Franklin

2. The Nine Best Practices†
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! What are the
attributes of a
well run project,
independent of
any methodology?

3. The Nine Best Practices
! Formal Risk Management – make
risk management a critical
success factor.
! Agreement On Interfaces –
capture and document the system
interfaces. Not only the software
interfaces, but also the process
interfaces.
! Formal Inspections –make visible
the development artifacts, review
these artifacts, and provide
feedback to the authors.
! Metrics Based Scheduling And
Management – measure
progress, quality, and other
tangible components of the
project.
! Binary Quality Gates – assure
progress is being made that
meets the quality guidelines.
! Project–wide Visibility Of
Progress To Plan – avoid going
dark.
! Defect Tracking – identify and
measure the reduction in defects
! Configuration Management –
identify and control the
components of the system and
their interaction with each other.
! People Aware Management –
manage the accountability of the
staff.
3

4. Formal Risk Management
4
! Risk management may be a new concept for a project
team.
! Here are some warm–up statements to get us focused.
! If You’re Not Managing Risk, You’re Managing The Wrong
Thing – Rear Admiral Bill Carlson
! Risk Management Is Project Management For Adults – Tim
Lister, The Atlantic Systems Guild
! These are strong statements, but they focus our attention
on the current gaps in the project management process.
! One way to focus our attention on risk management is to
realize that stupid risks are bad.

5. Addressing – Formal Risk Management
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! Risk management must be embedded in all the
project management activities
! It serves no purpose to have a list of risks without a
mitigation for each of them
! Even if that mitigation plan is to ignore the risk
! More sophisticated project organizations make use
of programmatic risk management
! This is an easy step to take with simple tools built
around MSFT Project

6. Agreement on Interfaces
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! Product and Process interfaces typically form the
essential elements of a program’s success.
! The creation and management of the interface domain
is the role of the architect and the principal developers.
! Documenting these interfaces is part of the planning
process
! “Givers and Receivers” is one approach
! “Value Stream Mapping” is another
! With a formal description of the interfaces, the project
team will be unable to determine the proper approach
to reaching “Done.”

7. Addressing – Agreement on Interfaces
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! Interface Control Documents are one starting point.
! Giver / Receiver Maps are another.

8. Formal Inspections
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! Rework done to fix defects not found when the
defect was introduced accounts for 40% to 50% of
the development budget on large projects.
! The cost of fixing these defects increases
dramatically as the product matures.
! Finding and repairing the defects before they are
absorbed by the next phase is critical to the success
of the project

9. Addressing – Formal Inspections
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! The level of formality must match the level of
quality:
! This can range from casual presentations to full
Verification and Validation
! The term “inspection” can be replaced with:
! Technical Performance Measures
! Design for Six Sigma

10. Metrics Based Planning
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! The early identification of problems is the only
reason to have performance metrics.
! The project management metrics are the yardstick
for measuring progress to plan.
! Earned Value Management is a necessary starting
point.
! Technical Performance Measures provides the
“sufficiency” part of performance management.

11. Addressing – Metrics Based Planning
11
! Metrics based planning is the basis of all good
project management methods.
! The metrics can range from simple to complex, but a
minimum set are needed.
! Cost and schedule performance can be provided by
simple Earned Value.

12. Binary Quality Gates
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! The devil’s in the details is a powerful concept for
product development.
! When project planning and monitoring are based
on insufficient detail, the discussion of the status of
the project is illusionary.
! Project management without detail is called Let’s
pretend.

13. Addressing – Binary Quality Gates
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! The granularity of the “binary” may vary
! Daily, weekly measures of physical percent complete.
! Monthly Contract Performance Report
! No matter which choice – or even a more traditional
approach
! An incremental and iterative approach to delivery
verifiable value to the customer is needed.

14. Project–Wide Visibility
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! Get the entire staff actively involved in identifying
problems and risks.
! When everyone is involved, the likelihood of missing
problems is greatly reduced.
! This broad involvement strengthens risk management
and increases the probability of the project’s
success.

15. Addressing – Project–Wide Visibility
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! Making programmatic and technical performance
visible keeps everyone honest.
! A “Wall of Truth” approach is used in mature
organizations.

16. Defect Tracking
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! Keeping defect reports is not sufficient, the metrics
of who, what, where, when, how, and why are as
important as the existence of a simple list.
! By tracking these metrics, basic indicators relating to
defects, schedule, cost, requirements, documentation
and staff can be made visible.
! Avoiding the “snowball” effect is one of the
outcomes of the metrics.
! Mortgaging the future with defects of the present is the
“snowball effect.”

17. Addressing – Defect Tracking
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! Defect generation and removal rates are part of
the “Wall of Truth.”
! Every defect introduced into the product, must be
removed at the expense of future features.
! Budget for defects “may” help here, but that budget
could be better used of the defect was a not
present.
! “Get it right the first time,” is a critical success factor
for all projects.

18. Configuration Management
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! Not controlling the products of the development
organization dramatically increases the complexity of
the result to a level approaching chaos.
! The result is certain failure,
! The management of the configuration is based on two
simple rules:
! Any piece of information approved at the quality gate level
must be controlled through the configuration management
process.
! Any piece of information that is concurrently used by more
than one individual or organization must be controlled
through the configuration management process.

19. Addressing – Configuration
Management
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! Separating Configuration Management from
Development is the start is higher quality
development.
! Making CM a profession is a critical success factor.

20. People Aware Management
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! Focus on people as a critical foundation for the
success of the project.
! The single most important factor in the success of
any project is the quality, experience, and
motivation of the technical and support staff.

21. Addressing – People Aware
Management
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! “It’s the People Stupid.”
! High performance organizations start and end with
people.

22. Final message …
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! Adopting the Nine Best Practices in some form is the
beginning of “moving up the maturity scale” of
product development.
! Making the Nine Best Practices your own will
require “walking the walk.”
Practicing the Best Practices creates
opportunities to deliver value

23. Questions
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! Are there any gaps in the
current “practices” that could
be filled?
! How can what we’ve seen
today be put to immediate use?
! How about longer term
evolutionary improvements?

24. Glen B. Alleman
Niwot Ridge Consulting
4347 Pebble Beach Drive
Niwot, Colorado 80503
303.241.9633
glen.alleman@niwotridge.com
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