PMP Assignment 3.2 - Lean Project Management Pt.2

Kaizen - 5S (contd)...
This 5S continual improvement process, is like getting feedback, analyze and give the action plan.
For example, Weekend plan

Movie - Hollywood or bollywood - It's been a long time we went to nice IMAX hollywood movie
Genre - Thriller & fantasy are available - Since we are going with kids, then we can go with the fantasy movies
Theater - It should be a theater near by - This theater should have movies with IMAX capability and kids movie should be available. Timings are important to make the kids ready. Traffic also should be less when we are driving to the theater and parking should be available.

This is just an example of 5S capabilities they are Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardized & Sustain

Poka Yoke - Eliminating the error
Errors in  a operations are inevitable but it should be eliminated by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors.

Gemba - the actual place
Appropriate way to understand the customer, getting the feedback or improving the products as necessary, understanding demand is walking with customer. Engineers will be placed where the transaction happens, looking for waste, opportunities and finding the improvement areas.

Obeya - War Room / Large Room
The place where decisions are to be taken with various departments to bring out the solutions called as war rooms in modern project management terms.

To make the speed decisions these war room discussions will be useful with the speed communication by making everyone in the same place, basically keeping everyone in same page. All kind of strategical tools, charts will be utilized to depict the issue, keep on track, or making any impacts to back to work.

5 Principles of Lean Thinking from the book of Lean Thinking

1. Specify value in the eyes of the customer
2. Identify the value stream for each product
3. Make value flow by eliminating waste
4. Let the customer pull the flow
5. Continuously improve in the pursuit of perfection.

Conclusion
Value streaming is important throughout the lean project management process. One have to follow the value streaming and work towards the product which valued by customer. On the same way, avoid the wastage which are not important for the project or the product.

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PMP Assignment 3.2 - Lean Project Management Pt.1

Post WWII, Japan want to run the manufacture units with minimum cost. Running cost become more, especially with Toyota car manufacturing unit. Taichi Ohno, Japanese Engineer and business man brought the concept of TPS (Toyota production system) originally called as JIT (Just in time). Concept of TPS is "Mudi", "Mura", "Muri". Later these concept introduced in US based motor companies & familiarized with Lean concept.

The machines that changed the world written by James Womak & Daniel Jones, changed the production based industries' style of work and acknowledging the concepts of Lean.

Techniques involved in this TPS are Kaizen, Obeya, Gemba, Poka yoke can be explained in this chapter. Other than that charts like, fish-bone diagram, KANBAN, Fault tree analysis, Reverse fault tree analysis can be explained in other chapters. Deming's cycle already mentioned in one of the article, http://www.jonnynow.com/2014/08/pdca-demings-cycle.html

Lean project management is a set of ideas, where with a less wastage can provide more value.

MUDA - Wastefulness

There are around 7 wastefulness identified, they are Defects, Over Production, Waiting, Non-Used Talent, Transport, Inventory, Motion, Excess Production. Wait you might ask me there are only 7, but what LEAN says, even non-used talent like creativity from employee is a wastefulness. Why I given this order because you can memorize these wasteful items as DOWNTIME. Easy to remember na!

MURI - Beyond one's power
Overburden or assigning the tasks to Men and machinery more than 100% may result with impact to business. Machines can be optimized with their performance, employees efforts can be safeguarded by the safety measures, through process designs and defining the work standards.

MURA - Unevenness
You can assume the Demand and supply here, where the demand available with the customer, production should be able to complete the demand. Over production or Under production should be monitored and rectified with the techniques. Also creating the openness in Supply chain, change product design and creating standard for employees included in MURA.

Kaizen - 5S
Kaizen change for better. 5S elements are called as continual improvement in process.

to be continued...

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PMP Assignment 3.1 - Traditional Project Management

Courtesy: rawpixel.com

I always wonder how the old monuments and buildings are built with such perfection. Kudos to our earlier architects and engineers. But wondering who coordinated with all workers to do the tasks. Might be those architects and engineers itself. We don't have much information though, I am just thinking of those days. When modern times getting ahead, surely project managers are involved to monitor the progress of projects, sending reports, communicating with stakeholders, vendors, key people etc.,

We need to regard two great men here Henry Gantt and Henri Fayol. What they provided to project management changed the Project Management forever. Henry Gantt provided Gantt chart, which is the tool and technique to control the projects. Henri Fayol is the person who brought five functions, 1.Planning, 2. Organizing, 3. Staffing, 4. Directing and 5. Controlling.

Henri Fayol

After 1950s some of the US based companies, included Gantt chart for temporary works. PERT and CPM introduced later to work on the activities from the projects. We can discuss about these later from the upcoming assignments.

Project management Triangle
Quality of the project is measured by its Scope, Cost & Schedule. Ex. To finish the project before the deadline, you may increase the budget, it will also affect the scope and schedule. If you are compromised with the low budget, your schedule will be slow and you might end up with changing the scope or low quality output.

 

Mathematical model for project management triangle is S=T x R (Scope = Time x Resources).

Here resources mentioned here can be Human resources, financial, physical resources required to complete the project. 

Scope
Where the project will be completely planned and it says, what is going to be done, objective of the project, who is going to do what? these scenarios will be documented initially like a planning to move to the next phase of Scheduling

Schedule
Here all the tasks mentioned in the scope are assigned with the resources and timelines will be mentioned.

Cost
Budget will be analyzed in this section, resources as mentioned above in STR, will be calculated and assigned for the scheduling the project.

Above three aspects are mostly involved in the Traditional project management.

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PMP Assignment 3 - Waterfall Model

Remember when we are in school days, when thought about being Engineer, Lawyer, Doctor, Teacher, Police etc., answers we got is first we need to complete our schooling then college after that we need to pursue our goals. Why I am talking about schooling and college here, there is a reason behind this today. Yes, Waterfall model, one of the oldest model, earlier this model was found by H.D. Bennington, in 1956, later it is found to be useful in Software Engineering.

Photo Credit: Jason Miles

When I went to this temple, it was a densely forest area, when we are nearing to this place, I saw the small tributaries, around the mountain. When I saw it is small and interesting, Tributaries started growing big, until I saw the huge waterfall which contributed by the small tributaries. Later I had this interesting wallpaper in my desktop, water fall of Georgia, which was soothing our eyes, gives serene feeling. You can compare that waterfall, which falling by layer by layer, in the same-way process too falling by layer to layer.

Water-fall in SDLC

Waterfall in SDLC widely accepted, because of its linear sequential life-cycle model. There will be no overlapping between the phases, each phase should be completed to achieve the next level. There are around 5-6 phase in SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)

Requirement Phase:
Here, the requirements will be gathered, if an application or app were developed, first we need to understand, why we are doing this, what will be the benefit, value or profit we are going to gain? Who are the architects, stake holders, programmers, developers to code the software, QA analysts, what could be the time frame? these are the questions will be asked & documented in this phase. Then it will be moved to next phase.

System Design:
Once we got the requirements, this is where architects and designers pitch in and look out the possibilities to make the requirements successful. They will analyze the requirements and provide the plan for hardware and software requirements. Basically, Servers, OS, Database, Storage, Network, Middle-ware & other application requirements, software requirements, etc., Also architects and designers are think tank of how should software have to work, they give the bird eye view to the developers.

Implementation:
Here comes our programmers and code developers, once they got the system design, they will do the coding to create the design as expected by the architects. Initially they create the small programs it was called as units, with the units, they will integrate into the application to work. Once they integrated the units into the application, it is ready to move to the next phase.

Testing:
Once units of small programs are created into the application, rigorous testing will be taken place. Remember there is a difference between Quality Assurance and Quality Testing, Quality Assurance is removing all possibility of bugs from the program, Quality Testing is putting ourselves in Customer shoes and testing to find the possibility of errors. Post integration test will find out all the possibility of errors and faults.

Deployment:
Once the functional and non-functional testing carried over, then application will be released to the market.

Maintenance:
Once application released to the market, there might be an issues with the client environment and their platforms, frequent updates, fixes and patches will help application to work with the client environment smoothly.

Pros:
Clear defined stages, easy to understand
Process and results are documented

Cons:
Cannot accommodate in changing environments
Each phase are silos, where integration between teams are highly impossible.
Difficult to measure the progress within the stages.

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PMP Assignment 2.1 - Glossary

Welcome to next set of glossary items,

Courtesy: Anthony jones

Issue Log
A document which contains the job issues, whose responsible for the job, status and resolving date.

Kill point
Project will be terminated with the experience of previous phase or performance on current phase called as kill point.

Lag
Lag is adding time between activities. Where as Lead is to subtracting time between activities.

Lessons Learnt
Lessons learnt will be captured during the project phase, where else we need to identify what went well and what needs to be improved. These improvisations can be helpful in future projects.

Milestone
To measure the significant progress like, major or events Milestone progress identification will be helpful.

Mitigation
Reducing the probability or impact of risk.

Objective
Clear concise statement of what activity is going to accomplish.

Portfolio
A collectively set of programs and projects.

Project baseline
Project Baseline is created on the phase of project's initiation and planning by the activities and budget. This will be helpful to identify the project's variance from the baseline.

Project Charter
Well, Project Charter is the document which created on project's initiation, where it captures, the activities, schedules, description of project which in turn goes for formal authorization where it will be reviewed by authorized personnel.

Proof of concept
This concept derived from an idea of Piloting the project, where the project or activity will be analyzed in a lab environment or in experiment, the concept will be based on the output of this activity or project.

Quality Risk Analysis
The probability of risk occurs in project, will be analysed through Quality Risk Management. Risk will be analyzed through probability and impact matrix.

Quality Assurance
A process to evaluate if the project meets all the requirements.

Quality Control
A process to ensure if the project meets or satisfies the stake holder's or project's requirement.

Scope
Scope document deemed to achieve everything in the project with success.

Stakeholder
A member or party who vested interest in the project who directly impact with the output of the project.

Hence completed the important glossary items. Will see you in next assignment.

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PMP Assignment 2 - Glossary

Welcome back to the assignment write-up, before writing assignment, what the guru says, I want to learn abbreviations and glossary. Actually I am reading PMP through video lessons, later planning to have classroom session. Since I want to complete the PMP in a week, slowly I am on to it. So planning to complete PMP certification in 90 days. Before that let me consume the video lectures and then go to classroom session later complete the PMP exam. Thats a lot of planning actually., lets we have the glossary items presented in PMP. Since we had, abbreviations before this assignment, remaining items in the glossary we are going to concentrate, also only the important ones.

Courtesy: Phil Roeder

Acceptance
Acknowledging something which felt it become true. Also acceptance in the project management or in the IT Risk Management, its accepting the risk or impact which going to take place within the project. Example. During impact analysis, stake holders may accept that Primary site will be down and Secondary site will be up during the activity. The acceptance criteria may enforce on Secondary application should be UP and running.

Administrative Closure
Project which successfully completed with the project results, or it got terminated, it should be closed with the help of the customer or project sponsor.

Benchmarking
Project or task should be analysed historically, external factors, organization factors, with the level of process and activities which can enhance its value called as Benchmarking.

Centralized contracting
All the contracts and projects will be approved in one place in organization it is called as centralized contracting

Checklist
List of activities to be complete probably involved in Work breakdown structure, where these activities to be complete for the completion of the project.

Communication management plan
This is to communicate stakeholders, customers, users or the information needed to be provide about the project or task to any personnel or documented in any manner which do the propaganda about the project which requires a plan  In communication management plan one have to choose the platform, model of communication, documentation etc.,

Configuration Management
Document which contains the information about the product or services. It also contains features, technical information and attributes which carried by product or service.

Control account plan
A tool which integrates, project scope, project schedule and budget. It will help management to monitor the progress of the project.

Critical Chain Method
A method to analyze resource availability, unavailable resources which required for the project, they can be re-aligned in the network scheduled diagram to complete the project successfully.

Crashing
Crashing involves more resource in the project, which is more than expected in network diagram. Crashing will cost higher prices in the projects.

Decision tree analysis
Through decision tree, one have to present the plan in two ways, he/she they have look out or determine which path or project will be suitable, more or less they need to find out the feasible cost effective project or process.

Deliverable
An outcome of the project, project phase or product, services is called as deliverables.

Direct Cost
This is the cost which keeps the project exist. The existence of the project may be depends upon the salary or salary hike, or machinery, equipment required, these may be required for existence of the project.

Fast Tracking
Doing things parallel rather than doing it sequentially is called as Fast tracking.

Float
Delaying the project or activity without delaying the project's schedule. There are three types of Float, Free float, delaying the current activity without delaying the successor's activity. Total float, activity can be delayed, as well as project can be complete within the expected schedule. Project Float, complete project can be delayed without passing the customer's expected completion criteria.

Flowchart
A chart contains the sequence of information, about the system and its parts also helps to find how process will be processed.

Force majeure
Unexpected event, example, Tsunami, Hurricane, cyclone or any other natural disasters.

Forecasting
An educated estimate to find out or it will tell how long the project or activity take for completion.

Indirect Cost
Cost attributed to run the project, example, utilities, office space or any other overheads.

ISO 9000
It is the quality procedure, where it will help organizations to run with the quality standards.

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Hima Das 400 Metres IAAF World U20 Champion 2018

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PMP Assignment 1.2 - Time & Process Abbreviations

This could be final abbreviations for PMP. Why I made time and process isolated, there is a reason behind it. I felt, there are more ITIL related process and abbreviations in PMP like change request, ETA etc., These are the things I learnt when I studied ITIL. Also Time and process are inter-related. Lets see what we are going to read in this assignment, since most of the abbreviations we had in previous assignments, we have already covered most of it,

AST - Agreed Service Time
Commonly known as downtime or service hours.

CMM - Capability Mature Model
Through Capability Mature model, organization to assess the themselves against the external environments, benchmark themselves and improve the process of its own products.

CCB - Change Control Board
Appointed members to review and approve the change requests. Change request fate will be decided to implement the change or not.

CCPM - Critical chain project Management
CCPM is to make resources to work in activities as per the schedule. This is one of the resource optimization technique.

CISD - Critical incident stress de-briefing
Critical incident stress de-briefing done, when team faced the trauma. To cope the stress and trauma, to ease the situation CISD will be used.

CSF - Critical Success Factor
This term is used, the factor which is key and critical to make project success.

EEF - Enterprise Environmental factor
These are internal and external factors, which are key to determine the project's success. External climate, organizational structure and resources are the key factors for EEF.

ETA - Estimated Time Arrival
Also known as expected time arrival, it is to know the remaining time, where the particular entity to arrive.

IMP - Integrated Master Plan
It shows the relational structure between the activities, it bring down the plan and segregated with tasks and shows the relations.

IMS - Integrated Master Schedule
It shows the relation between schedules, time lines which related to each other tasks.

RAID - Risk Assumption Issues Dependencies
While we reporting to Stake-holders, we need to have a log contain Risks, Assumptions, Issues and dependencies of a projects. Hence this is called RISK log.

SoW - Statement of Work
Statement of work is the comprehensive detail of an activities which noted against the dates or schedule.

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PMP Assignment 1.1 - Budget/Cost Abbreviations

As I told you in previous assignment, I thought it will be better if I isolated the Cost/Budget related abbreviations into one.

AC - Actual cost
It is the cost realized for a specific time or period when it performed. ACWP (Actual cost of Work performed)

Thanks Kheel Center, https://www.flickr.com/photos/kheelcenter/

BAC - Budget at Completion
This also called as total planned value. This is the sum of all budgets incurred for a project.

BCWP - Budgeted Cost of Work Performed
We are going to look out many Budget related abbreviations, now this is explained as Budget which allocated for specific project which actually performed project, with the period of time called as BCWP

BCWS - Budget Cost of Work Scheduled
Is that previous abbreviation little confusy, this is to make un-complex of previous one. BCWS is the budget is allocated to schedule the project with the performance time line. Previous is for performed and BCWS is for scheduled. See the difference.

BOM - Bill of Materials
When I heard this abbreviation for first time, I thought it is Nuclear bomb. But this is different, actually more than that for projects. Not sure if this terminology used recently, this is really fascinating term, personally for me. BOM will be created to know start to end, materials, services to be acquired or brought to do the project.

CAPEX - Capital Expenditure
I didn't know the value, how this blog is useful in terms of budget and cost. But its really going well. Capital expenditure is to acquire physical fixed assets or upgrading existing assets, basically for long term usage.

COQ - Cost of Quality
This is to ensure quality of project, basically in monetary wise to analyze the acceptable and non-acceptable deliverable for the project.

CPI - Cost Performance Index
Now we are going to talk about Cost management in Project management. Cost performance index is to calculate cost efficiency of a project. It will be calculated in ratio basis, earned value to actual cost.

CV - Cost Variance
Cost variance is the true measurement of project cost on a specific project.

EV - Earned Value
Earned value is the precise and specific value of project achieved in regards to which is mentioned in Work breakdown structure and completion of Work breakdown structure.

EAC - Estimate at Completion
The estimate in regards to estimated cost vs actual cost in project.

ETC - Estimate to Completion
Estimate of the cost, which project still need to complete.

NPV - Net Present Value
Net present value is the calculation, which calculates the present value and the value adjusted in future in terms of inflation. It allows to determine, future of the project and helps with planning accordingly.

ROI - Return of Investment
Percentage which calculated to determine the financial gain of project against total project investment. This is to assess overall project's profit.

TCPI - To-Complete Project Index
TCPI is the calculation for the remaining project work and remaining budget. Also helpful to budget allocation for project completion.

TCO - Total Cost Ownership
It calculates the complete ownership of purchase, operations and maintenance through its life. It will estimates its direct and indirect it can incur.

VA - Variance Analysis
Practice of investigating the deviations between the actual and planned.

VAC - Variance at Completion
It is the estimate of calculation shows that budget at completion and estimate at completion.

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PMP Assignment 1 - PMP Abbreviations

Courtesy - Ludovic Bertron

Hi all, thought of writing PMP assignment online, also just planning if its useful for PMP students or its refreshing the thoughts of Project Management Professional program.

Let's do this right away, since many years I am planning to do PMP, but this year I have strong feeling that I will complete the PMP certification. Before doing that, I am going through some video lessons, before reaching to classroom session, want to understand some terminologies which in turn useful while we are doing the course.

Let's start with PMP

PMP - Project Management Professional
The most important industry recognized certification for Project Managers. One can know more details in this link, (https://www.pmi.org/certifications/types/project-management-pmp)

PMI - Project Management Institute
World's leading institute for project management. Next time if some-body says PMI standards, it's a Project Management Institute standards they are referring.

PMBoK - Project Management Body of Knowledge
Often called as pimbok in our project management world. PMBOK is a standards which is foundation for PMP candidates. These are set of guidelines, standards & frameworks provided by PMI.

 PMO - Project Management Office
An organizational unit within the management will work on project related activities. It has archives of Knowledge resources, process, history of projects etc., Also provide process and procedures for doing the projects.

P3 - Projects, Programs and Portfolios
It's a collective to the management. P3 assurance is satisfying stakeholders and sponsors to meet the requirements, expectations and objectives.

PRISM - Projects integrating Sustainable Methods
It's a principle based methodology, which tries to increase the value of the project by focusing on Total asset lifecycle.

We are going to look-out some important abbreviations not all of them,

ADM - Arrow Diagram Method
Network diagram provides status of milestones or events. AOA - Activity on arrow. AON - Activity on Node.

APF - Adaptive project Framework
It rejects the traditional methods and frameworks to be competitive to the external environment. It allows to replan the objectives, goals for the changing requirements.

BOSCARD - Background, Objectives, Scope, Constraints, Risk and Deliverables

BPM - Business Process Management
In order to improve the business process, it represents a data with analysis & evaluations.

EMU - Enhanced, Maintenance and Upgrade
This is the term used in Software industry, where Enhanced to improve the functionality, Maintenance is to ensure it is working as expected and Upgrade is related to new release of software.

GERT - Grapical Evaluation and Review Technique
Alternative to PERT, which uses Monte-carlo technique by simulating through network and time durations. But not used often in complex structure.

KPI - Key Performance Indicators
Key performance indicators, will let us know how successful the project will be. This will be performed even before the project executed.

MoSCoW - Must have, Should have, Could have & Won't have
This abbreviation is useful when communicating the stake holders information. These are four categories where an information must have, should have, could have and won't have.

NLM - Non-linear Management
It counter the linear management. Non-linear management, will work on changing and adaptive management style, which don't have specific frameworks, guidelines.

OR - Operations Research
It's a mathematical, scientific & statistical method to optimize decision making. I am big fan of this, my favorite subject in MBA.

PEST - Political, Economic, Social & Technology
PEST analysis is to analyse the project in the perspective of Political, Economic, social and Technology.

PERT - Program evaluation and review technique
It's a statistical method to analyze the activity and time durations.Typically illustrated with Activity on Arrow diagrams.

PPM - Project Portfolio Management
It's collective responsible for providing the organization's information, like objectives, programs and objectives. It is closely related to OPM (Organizational project management).

QCD - Quality, Cost & Delivery
This will be on process management and all three factors are inter-related. Each performance will affect the others.

RBS - Resource Breakdown Structure
Hierarchical list of resource needed for project work. It will be classified as type & function.

SDLC - Systems Development Life Cycle
This term is used at Software, hardware or both usually in IT field. This is to create, release and maintain the such information systems. Six phases of SDLC are planning, analysis, design, implementation, testing and maintenance.

SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Timed
This is related to goal, how a goal should be? It should be S.M.A.R.T. If you are really serious to know more, there is an amazing article about SMART

WBS - Work Breakdown Structure
We hear a-lot about Work breakdown structure in PMP, It provides, hierarchical, comprehensive, deliverables to complete the scope of work or projects. This structure categorized into work based, cost based, to form the cost estimates.

You may have ask me is that it, actually this is it in important terms, I am hearing, where is TOI, MTBI, EAV, ETA etc., well I am planning to cover it on separate topic, Cost/Budget and Time based. I believe if we cover the both, we might cover most of the things required for PMP abbreviations.

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