Friday 11th September
It is Friday 5pm somewhere, time to log off and enjoy the weekend. In the meantime, enjoy a random sample from around the web....
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“Hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual progress of Man than ATTENTION. Animals clearly manifest this power, as when a cat watches by a hole and prepares to spring on its prey..."
Charles Darwin, ON THE DESCENT OF MAN, 1871 Introduction Below is a list of items to think about when starting up a project. There is an assumption that the project has been sold and now the focus is on setting up the project to deliver against what was in the contract and reducing the execution risk during the project. Start up 1. Did the pre-sales team do a handover to the delivery team? 2. Did they follow any checklists 3. Were any issues identified? 4. Is the delivery team ready? 5. Is the customer ready? Governance 6. Is the project big enough or is it high risk, that would justify setting up and an internal steering team? 7. Have the meetings been booked with the right stakeholders? 8. Is the delivery team going to follow a standard delivery methodology? 9. Has it been used before, does the team have experience in using the methodology? 10. Has a shared work space been set up to store the documents used during the bid phase. For example the signed Statement of Work (SOW), the project plan, any business requirements from the customer, the budget estimates or templates that were used to price the project. For an SOW template go here. 11. Is there a Project Management Plan (PMP) created which will describe how the project will be delivered? Has this been reviewed with the customer? Basically the PMP is the playbook that describes how the various teams involved in the project will work together. 12. Have the key stakeholders been identified. This should include project stakeholders who will be involved in the delivery of the project as well as customer stakeholders who will approve and accept the project deliverables. In addition it is often prudent to engage with the end customer stakeholders or the business as these are the people who will accept the solution and who have often providing the funding for the project. Business stakeholders will often delegate to the IT department to manage and deliver the project but they should be kept close to ensure alignment between business and project objectives. Background- Moscow Russia
The history of VimpelCom started when its co-founders, Dr. Dmitry Zimin and Augie K. Fabela II, came together to pioneer the Russian mobile industry. At the invitation of MAK Vimpel, a Russian defense contractor, Mr. Fabela first visited Russia in 1991. It was during this period that he saw the significant opportunity for wireless in Russia. It was also when he met his future partner, Dr. Dmitri B. Zimin, a senior scientist at the Mints Radio Technical Institute, a division of MAK Vimpel. Inspired to do what everyone said couldn't be done; Mr. Fabela and Dr. Zimin set out to accomplish their vision of bringing basic wireless communications to Russia. A young American entrepreneur who was only 25 years old and spoke no Russian and a 63-year-old Russian scientist who spoke no English, were determined to build an independent company with an entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit--which led to the founding of VimpelCom in 1992. One year later, VimpelCom launched its first commercial network, a five base station system in Moscow, limiting sales to only 1,000 mobile phones in order to ensure quality of service. The commercial service was launched under the Beeline brand, a brand created by Mr. Fabela in late 1993 to differentiate the company as a youthful and fun company, rather than a technical company. Very soon, the Beeline brand became the choice for admirers of state-of-the-art technology and mobile fans. By its first anniversary, Beeline became the largest operator in Moscow, and its trademark was well-known in 20 Russian regions. Together, VimpelCom’s founders built a successful company forged out of cultural diversity and based on a common passion to dream the impossible and to succeed. VimpelCom has since continued its long tradition as a leading innovator in communications, evolving to address changing industry dynamics and to capture growth opportunities. In the 1990s, the Company introduced two digital cellular communications standards to Russia and built a dual band GSM-900 / 1800 cellular network. In November 1996, our predecessor OJSC VimpelCom became the first Russian company since 1903 to list shares on the NYSE. In 1999, VimpelCom led the emergence of the mass consumer market for wireless communications in Russia by introducing a prepaid packaged product solution. Then, in 2000, the Company continued to innovate with new technologies such as WAP (wireless application protocol) and BeeOnline – a multi-access Internet portal offering its customers a wide variety of wireless information and entertainment services. It is Friday 5pm somewhere, time to log off and enjoy the weekend. In the meantime, enjoy a random sample from around the web....
Thanks for reading Andrew "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
— Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love In addition a human should be able to scope and quote for a new piece of business. This is designed as a checklist of things to consider when preparing a fixed price quote for a customer. Having good tools and templates are vital for success as this should be a repeatable process and should not rely entirely on the project manager or pre sales consultant to think of everything. The following list will help. Customer History
Pricing options 4. Would it be better to undertake the first phase such as requirements and design under a Time and Materials (T&M) basis instead? Often the first phase of the project the requirements and scope of the project can be ill defined or some of the technology building blocks unknown. In this case it may be appropriate to offer the client a T&M engagement to help scope out the project until it can be reasonably well defined enough to allow a fixed price. 5. Would it be better to provide a ball park estimate or a rough order of magnitude (ROM) instead? This type of estimate can be used during the business case or analysis phase by the client to decide whether a project meets a certain hurdle like a Return on Investment (ROI). You should include some assumptions and scope boundaries when submitting a ROM price so that there is an understanding of what the ROM estimate is based on. 6. Would a plus or minus estimate be more appropriate to give an indication of price in a short time frame? Often putting together a fixed price proposal can take a period of time longer than the customer is willing to wait. Therefore you could offer a plus or minus estimate with a 50-100% margin for error so that the customer can decide to go ahead or not. This can also reduce your pre sales costs. 7. Would the project be better priced by doing a mixture of Fixed Price and T&M? For example could you do the design and build as fixed price and testing and support as T&M? The build element might be easy to scope out but the testing could be unknown where you do not have experience of working with the client and there may be extensive testing cycles and accreditation required to move from testing into production. This can often be the case with large government or military contracts where the accreditation process can be extensive even though the build or configuration cycle can be short. Customers are reluctant to accept and deploy new software and code until it has passed through their gated process. 8. Would Time boxing instead of Deliverable based fix pricing be better? This can be more appropriate in agile projects, where a team of resources including project managers, business analysts, testers and developers work together for a period of time and get through what they can in the allocated time box. 9. Would it be better to do rolling Fixed Price Phases rather than an upfront full fixed price? As more details emerge as the project moves forward the next phase can be fixed price. At the beginning maybe consider providing a ROM for the whole project. |
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For the project office to use. A list of things to check off in managing a project grouped into sections from scope, time, budget, quality and management. Instantly check the health of any project by scoring against these 117 questions.
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The following is a project checklist, which can be used by project managers, program managers, delivery managers, pre sales consultants and anyone who is focused on ensuring that all areas of a project are being managed to ensure successful delivery. It is organised around the lifecycle of a project from initiation through delivery and close out.
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