Quality Assurance Roles on the Project
Posted by Brad Egeland
During the Quality Assurance phase, the project’s quality is reviewed and hopefully approved and the project is moved toward official release. Keep in mind this document describes a very structured QC or QA review with specific responsibilities prior to official rollout. How much of this pertains to all projects or any projects really depends on several things including the size and budget of the project, the structure of your organization, and the customer’s wishes.
The people responsible for quality assurance receive the finished project from IT. They then install and test the project using the documentation created for it to ensure that the project meets the Design Document specifications created by IT, and that the documentation meets end-user.
Separately, the person(s) responsible for corporate communications and business development may create an official Project Announcement Plan. This plan includes all of the deliverables necessary to announce a project including due dates and projection dates. If applicable, an advertising plan, press release plan, and press tour is scheduled. This all, of course, depends on the project. Business Development identifies, contacts, and signs up beta sites. The Project Manager creates a plan detailing how the project will be released to users. The role of each project team involved in the Quality Assurance phase is listed below.
IT
IT is the functional area responsible for programming, managing, and integrating the project’s hardware and software. They are also responsible for defining, designing, and developing a project, as well as for conducting its initial testing and fixing any errors before it is released. IT is the key member on the project team and needs to be available to provide technical information both written and verbal to all members of the team.
Communications
Communications is the functional area responsible for all communications inside and outside of the company. Smaller companies do not need a separate communications person for internal projects; the Project Manager will handle all the internal corporate communication. Larger companies with offices scattered around the country or around the globe will need a person to provide communications to end-users. If the project being developed will be made available to people outside the company, the person responsible for corporate communications will need to interact with the company’s public relations agency, advertising agency, industry analysts, and other outside agencies.
Negotiating for Specifications and Resources on the Project
Posted by Brad Egeland
In general, project manager will conduct two primary types of negotiations on the project. One will be with the project customer concerning project specifications and requirements and another with the various functional managers who control the personnel resources needed for the project.
Of course, there may be other types of negotiating throughout the project – usually concerning change order work and issues that may arise. I’ve written about these before and we’re aware of these types of negotiations, though they may or may not be necessary. The negotiations be discussed in this article are almost certain to take place.
Negotiating with the Customer
Negotiations with a customer occur at a project’s outset and are done to arrive at a project’s specification. It would seem to be a straightforward task: The customer explains what is wanted, and the project manager captures it in the specification and goes ahead with the project. This is not always the case, however. Some customers may come up with only a fuzzy idea of their desired product and may need help from the project manager to discover what is possible to be produced for them. This is where negotiating enters in the process: The project manager identifies the various tradeoffs to the customer and negotiates decisions regarding these tradeoffs.
The customer may not understand project feasibility, or what can and cannot be produced—and also may have come up with time and cost expectations that are inconsistent with what experience dictates. Resolving these types of problems also requires negotiating.
Basically, the key to negotiating is to clearly identify the needs of the person with whom you are negotiating. Then, you must tell this person exactly how you propose to meet those needs, discover the constraints limiting their efforts to help you meet those needs, and discover what they would accept as an incentive for their help.
Making Informed Project Management Decisions
Posted by Brad Egeland
Making decisions is part of daily life for any manager or executive. Some decisions may result in a change of strategy in personnel policy or employee training. Other decisions may result in undertaking a project to launch a new product line. A gamble often is associated with important decisions. Newspapers frequently report the names of executives who were rewarded for “making the right decision” and those who were fired for being wrong. More than likely, those who were rewarded had weighed the pros and cons of the situation and had become thoroughly informed before deciding on the venture.
Making informed decisions is the dilemma at the heart of assessing potential project hazards. It plagues the project manager whose sponsor requests that he or she prepare an assessment of potential project hazards for the statement of work.
How does a project manager go about making informed decisions concerning potential external project hazards? By going out and talking to as many people as possible who have knowledge of every conceivable aspect of the project—and by gathering as much input from them as possible.
Armed with this information, the project manager should be able to formulate key questions for the experts who have the answers. For example, if a project involves building a new atomic power plant, a critical question for a politician from the affected district would be, “Will the government become so environmentally concerned during the construction phase of the plant that they might close us down before we can complete it?” A seismologist could be asked, “What is the earthquake possibility on the land where we propose to build?”
July 2010 PM Survey Results – The Project Schedule
Posted by Brad Egeland
The July PM survey on the tools we use to manage the project schedule and how we go about using those tools is now complete. The results aren’t too surprising – at least not to me. As always, the detailed results will be posted on my site (www.bradegeland.com) under Past Survey Results. For some spin analysis on the results, read on….
What tool are we using?
The results in this category didn’t surprise me too much – except maybe for the overall domination of the clear winner. A far majority of survey responders indicated that they use MS Project in some form (2003, 2007, 2010, Project Server, etc.) to put together and manage their project schedule. In all, 85% indicated that MS Project is either theirs or their company’s tool of choice. 9% indicated they use some version of Primavera. 2% actually indicated that they use Excel to manage the project schedule.
Do we allow our teams to update the schedule?
This is another category that didn’t surprise me – at least not according to my own practices. Do you allow your team members update access to the project schedule? 74% indicated that they do not. 13% do allow team members to revise the project schedule and another 13% indicated that it they allow it on some projects.
Do we allow our customers to update the schedule?
A full 87% of survey responders said that they never allow customers update access to the project schedule – which I personally feel is a wise decision. Only 4% indicated that they do allow customers update access and 9% said that it depended on the project.
Black Hat IT Security Conferences 2010
Posted by Brad Egeland
Yesterday, I was informed that I will have the honor of receiving a complimentary media pass for next week’s Black Hat IT Security Conference and Briefings in Las Vegas as part of the 2010 Black Hat tour.
How does this affect project management or relate to project management? I’m not quite sure yet, though we all know security is something that is at or should be at the heart of every IT project – especially engagements dealing with sensitive data. That alone makes this topic very relevant to project management and to IT in general.
What is Black Hat?
The Black Hat Briefings are a series of highly technical information security conferences that bring together thought leaders from all facets of the infosec world – from the corporate and government sectors to academic and even underground researchers. The environment is strictly vendor-neutral and focused on the sharing of practical insights and timely, actionable knowledge. Black Hat remains the best and biggest event of its kind, unique in its ability to define tomorrow’s information security landscape.
In addition to the large number of short, topical presentations in the Briefings, Black Hat also provides hands-on, high-intensity, multi-day Trainings. The Training sessions are provided by some of the most respected experts in the world and many also provide formal certifications to qualifying attendees. Arrangements can also be made to bring Black Hat’s trainers to your location for private and customized training.
