PROPOSAL
SUPPORT		 PROGRAM MANAGEMENT OUTSOURCING PROGRAM REVIEWS & PROJECT RECOVERY PROCESS IMPROVEMENT & TRAINING

Estimates

Risk Analysis

Development Process

CMMI Requirements

Proposal Review and Evaluation

Program Planning

Estimation

Earned Value Management (EVM)

Program Metrics

Measurement Driven Management

Supplier Evaluation

Distributed Project Management

Manage Overseas Development

Requirements Review

Product Quality
Assessment

Risk Identification & Management

Independent Estimates
at Completion (EAC)

Project Recovery Planning

Goals and Choosing a Methodology

Change Management

Program Management
(PMP, PMBOK)

CMMI

Six Sigma

Inspections and
Defect Prevention
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Our Perspective on Project Management and Control

Projects often get into trouble because management lacks the capability to anticipate project problems and take timely corrective action. This leaves the project manager in the difficult position of trying to directly manage negative project outcomes (over budget, late, low quality) after they have already become apparent. At that point, the only options are overtime, adding cost, and slipping schedule and in all likelihood delivering a product with quality problems. In terms of Six Sigma, the issue is trying to directly manage outcomes (Y’s) rather than manage their causes (X’s). PS&J Software Six Sigma helps managers identify the causes and take appropriate corrective actions with enough lead-time to avoid escalating problems and serious disruption to the project plan. Frequent small midcourse corrections can prevent a project being seriously off track during its endgame.

We do this by using measurement data derived from the product development activities in the context of a process performance model. We extrapolate current project performance down stream to integration and test where results of process deficiencies usually show up as serious cost, schedule, and quality problems and we identify high leverage processes (X’s) that can be controlled to in order to manage and control overall project performance (Y’s). The same model can be used to generate effort estimates and forecast product quality (defects found in test and/or operation) at each stage of the product development cycle.

Thus, PS&J Software Six Sigma uses early product quality data to drive effective management and uses continuous extrapolation of "estimated effort" and "estimated time to complete" based on Earned Value (EV) data to keep a laser like focus on the trend in Estimate to Complete (ETC) and the probable number of post delivery defects that will be found in the product.

Risk Identification, mitigation planning, and pro-active risk management completes the picture by providing the tools to deal with unplanned events by making them less likely to happen or by having a plan to recover when they do occur. PS&J Software Six Sigma's approach to risk management is fully integrated into our measurement driven approach to management. We quantity all risks in terms of their impacts on cost, schedule, and product quality. We use process measurements to define risk mitigation and recovery thresholds and triggers. And we use statistical analysis based on our estimating models to size appropriate management reserves.

This leads us naturally into the issue of process improvement. If a process performance model indicates that an organization’s existing practices are not capable of performing at a level consistent with the business goals and constraints of the organization and the needs of its projects, it needs to be improved. Process improvement should never be undertaken as an end unto itself. It should always be a means to the end of meeting organizational goals and/or achieving project objectives. PS&J Software Six Sigma recommends a project-planning paradigm that includes assessing the capability of existing processes relative to project needs and including high leverage improvements directly in the project plan. If a common thread emerges across multiple projects, then it makes sense to move those process improvements to the organizational level and to pursue them independently of specific projects.

To be effective, improvements must result in near-term benefits in productivity and cycle time. This doesn’t mean that we are not interested in improvements that yield long term benefits, only that we think that all viable improvements must have a short term benefit in addition to a long term one. The reason is simple: effective continuous improvement requires sustained management sponsorship. Sustained sponsorship is impossible without a near-term, quantifiable, return on investment. There is so much change in today’s business environment that a long-term return may simply not materialize due to changed circumstances. Moreover, given the frequent re-organizations that are common in most businesses, it is unrealistic to assume the continuity of management sponsorship necessary to make a long-term improvement. We prefer to test any improvement opportunity against a few simple criteria:

Our experience is that most organizations have plenty of opportunities that meet these criteria. Good processes are “lightweight�? and they focus on what developers actually do at their desks. Processes that don’t have a significant positive impact on daily activities are most likely a source of needless overhead. Process documentation should be short and simple with clear quantitative entry and exit criteria. Additionally, it takes measurements to quantify the effectiveness of a new or existing practice. Moreover, once a practice is in place, its effectiveness will decline without active management. Rational management requires fact-based decisions based on measurements.

There is an abundance of model and methods designed to facilitate software process improvement including Six Sigma, SEI’s CMMI, and PMI’s PMBOK as well as turnkey software processes like Extreme, SCRUM, RUPP and the SEI’s TSP. PS&J Software Six Sigma is familiar with all of them. These models and methods can all add value if used well and they can all add overhead if used inappropriately.

PS&J Software Six Sigma has found that all of the models are useful provided measurement is used to assess and control process information. We have also found they are all likely to be less effective or even ineffective in the absence of measurement driven management of process performance. None of the models is likely to reach its full capability unless integrated with a measurement driven approach to project management and control. PS&J Software Six Sigma uses this fundamental approach as a common thread, freely incorporating the best ideas from all of the models into an implementation of any one of them.