Dashboard Data for Government IT Projects

Since we’ve done a decent amount of discussion here on project status, project budgets, on schedule, behind schedule, and project dashboards in general, it was refreshing to read the federal government’s CIO, Vivek Kundra’s idea of making IT project data available for everyone to view. And he wants it completely unfiltered. He’s correct in stating that data gets too much massaging…that happens too much in the private sector – imagine how much it can happen in the public sector.

The following info comes from J. Nicholas Hoover’s article for InformationWeek and I find it a breath of fresh air for those of us who have been managing projects a long time and priding ourselves in presenting meaningful, realistic data even when it hurts. And I have worked a great deal in the public sector on large government projects – much bad news can get hidden if you choose to go that route. It’s nice to see them wanting to take the high road with the tax payers’ dollars.

Federal CIO Wants Unfiltered Data on IT Projects

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra is looking to improve the data that’s available on the effectiveness of government IT projects by tapping directly into systems that collect data on those projects.

Speaking during a town hall yesterday at the Open Government and Innovations Conference, Kundra said there are “too many people in between” the government’s recently launched IT Dashboard and the original sources of data made available there. The IT Dashboard is a Web site that discloses information about government IT projects, including whether those projects are on schedule and on budget. “Data gets massaged too many times,” Kundra said.

As part of the IT Dashboard, projects that are significantly over budget or behind schedule get highlighted in red in charts that show agency IT spending. Kundra acknowledged concerns among government IT professionals and CIOs that employees would be scrutinized and their job effectiveness judged on whether projects were in the red.

“It’s okay if a project is behind schedule as long as we understand what’s causing the delay,” he said. “Just because something’s red is not cause for panic.”

Kundra acknowledged that the IT Dashboard doesn’t do enough to recognize the successful outcomes of IT projects and said his office is working add that capability to the IT Dashboard. The challenge is to insure that performance and expenditure data are integrated in the process, he added.

Kundra said his office is looking at a number of federal regulations and policies, including the federal policy on cookies and the Paperwork Reduction Act, to assess whether they continue to make sense in today’s technology environment.

His team is also looking at FedBizOpps, the government site that lists procurement opportunities for private industry, to see if technology like RSS feeds can be added to make it more usable.

Help! I Can’t Find My Project!

Ok, this may be a little extreme, but for project managers who often handle 6-8 live projects at once….this can nearly become a reality.

The New Role

In 2006, I started working for an organization in a Sr. Project Management role leading proprietary enterprise software implementations. I came on-board and took over for a person going on leave so there was really no ramp-up opportunity… I just sat in on one customer status call and then took over…on 7 projects.

And these were not small projects either…they were for large organizations and institutions like the FDA, the University of Maryland, The World Bank, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, a major medical supply manufacturer, etc.

As an application developer I always found it easier…and more rewarding…to develop an application from start to finish. Modifying someone else’s code is painful – to me at least. Same holds true for project management. Sure, it’s nice to be called in to fix a project in trouble, but taking an engagement from kickoff to deployment is very satisfying. Starting out with a new company and taking on 7 ‘in process’ projects very quickly – 2 of which were in dire straits – can be a recipe for disaster.

When Transition Really Can’t Happen

Needless to say, I had to get up to speed quickly. It wasn’t the outgoing PMs fault…she had as many files put together as possible…her management just took a little extra time finding a replacement. I came in, sat in on one conference call status meeting for each client, had a couple of handoff/knowledge transfer calls with her and then that was it. Transition had happened.

Over the first two weeks I poured over the transition materials, old status reports and budget information as much as possible while trying to stay on top of the customer calls and correspondence that was taking place. Keep in mind, I was also taking on 7 different delivery teams comprised of people I didn’t know at all since I was new to the organization. So not only was I learning the customer, I was learning the staff on my side as well. Thankfully, they were all great and skilled people and there was some personnel overlap on a few of the projects so there weren’t as many resources to get to know as you might think…but it was still quite a task.

Use Your Own Methods

They key for me to finally get it all in a manageable format was when I created my own project dashboard. The organization didn’t have much of a project dashboard process at the time…they still don’t….but I created my own from scratch so that I could pick it up at any time and know what was needed when and what the major issues were. With 7 different projects and 7 different customers, that meant that I had 7 different delivery team meeting schedules, 7 different weekly customer status calls, and 7 different delivery dates/times for revised project schedules, status reports, issues/risks lists, and budget updates. That dashboard is the only thing that got me through the first couple of months at the organization…without it I would probably not have known which end was up at any given time.

Summary

Sometimes stepping into a new role or a new company can seem like a crazy train wreck. But in the end it’s all still project management and behind each project is a customer that needs you to lead them. The key is to stay on top of your projects and remain confident and in control even when you’re just trying to get your head above water.

Use the resources around you. I sure did – the competent staff on each project were invaluable in helping me get up to speed. Also, have a tool that helps you get there. For me it was my own dashboard for the projects I was managing showing green/yellow/red status for each, identifying key weekly dates for each project’s deliverables and status calls as well as current critical issues to follow-up on. Stay on top of the information – don’t let the information bury you.

One Case for Twitter – Comcast / Salesforce Case Study

I have now written two articles fully debunking Facebook of having any real project management or business related application. I’ve gone nearly as far with Twitter – only admitting that it’s good for networking and possibly for reaching out for hard-to-find answers when issues on your projects concerning technology or process may arise.

However, I just read the following situation InformationWeek where a Comcast rep was solving subscribers issues by reaching out to them on Twitter. From a pure project management perspective, possibly the best usage would be post-deployment support or possibly lessons learned information, but it’s an interesting read either way….read on…

Frank Eliason, a Comcast Customer-Service Rep, has more than 13,000 followers on Twitter. In the coming weeks, he’s going to help Salesforce.com figure out how to introduce corporate customer-service systems into the world of Twitter.

About a year ago, Eliason and his team of 10 reps, who primarily answered customer e-mails, began to seek out and help customers who were publicly blogging their criticisms and frustrations with Comcast. The team increasingly concentrated on Twitter and its millions of easily searchable microblogs. Eliason’s readiness to help solve Comcast customers’ problems, while calmly ignoring the occasional insults thrown his way, soon made him somewhat of a personality among Twitter regulars. He’s known as @comcastcares.

Then the media came calling, and in recent months, several newspapers, magazines, and television networks have profiled Eliason. His technique is to tentatively approach Twitterers critical of Comcast, rather than offer up advice that wasn’t asked for. “I never thought I’d become famous on three words: Can I help?” Eliason said.

Now Salesforce wants Eliason’s help. It recently announced an add-on for Salesforce CRM that lets companies track and aggregate customer complaints on Twitter. Eliason and his team will be testing the offering, which is scheduled for general availability in the summer. It’s a perfect fit, since Comcast is already a customer of Salesforce CRM’s Internet (a.k.a. “cloud”)-based software services.

CRM for Twitter will include a dashboard for tracking and monitoring topics on Twitter, the replies to those topics, and whether customer issues were resolved, and it will alert customer-service reps to volume spikes on certain topics. The app will be integrated with Salesforce’s Knowledge Base, which reps use to look up answers to customers’ questions and problems.

Pricing will start at $995 a month for five agents and support for 250 customers. This isn’t Salesforce’s first social networking attempt: In January, it announced an app service that companies can set up to have customers come to them on Facebook (the searchable Twitter approach wouldn’t work with Facebook, since users’ “walls,” where they would post comments, operate on an invitation-only basis). Still, using a team of salaried employees to seek out disgruntled customers on the Web may seem counterintuitive to the typical big-business approach to customers service; that is, stock a phone bank with as many low-cost workers as possible that follow scripts in a database.

But Salesforce executives said during a recent InformationWeek briefing that maybe that’s not the best approach. Perhaps, they suggested, companies need to move beyond the call-center mentality and start reaching people at the place they’re increasingly going to complain about things and get help from others: the Internet.

Twitter, of course, is used by just a small fraction of Comcast’s customers, and Eliason’s team is a tiny speck in a pool of 30,000 customer reps at the company. Still, Eliason said his team has helped solved about 21,000 customer issues on Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, and other social networking sites since starting the work a year ago, and he envisions a day when perhaps thousands of Comcast reps can use the CRM for Twitter application.

“This allows us to be much more efficient because it’s going to tie into Knowledge Base,” Eliason said. “My team is the guinea pigs.”

There’s also a big-brother quality to a software service that helps companies find what their customers are saying about them and then intervene. Eliason said it’s all in the approach.

“My advice to companies considering this is that you don’t try to interfere with a conversation,” Eliason said. “If someone is commenting about Comcast, we may not give the answer right off the bat. We don’t force ourselves into a conversation. Instead, we throw the ball in their court, with, ‘Can I help?’ ”

Twitter has also proven to be an “early warning system,” Eliason said; customers will tweet about a Comcast problem before calling customer service.

In some situations, Eliason’s team has known about issues before a Comcast call center. Last year, Comcast reps working on the East Coast at 7 a.m. saw a few late-night tweets about a network problem in San Francisco (4 a.m.). The call centers serving San Francisco didn’t start getting calls about the issue until three hours later, when most Comcast customers in the area were waking up and trying to sign on.

Based on his experience with Twitter, Eliason believes that public social networks will prove to be far more important to businesses than they may are expecting. “Engaging with customers is what works, not PR or marketing or customer-relationship ‘management,’ ” he said. “People respect a company when it’s not about the message, it’s about the personal relationship.”

This article was written by Mary Hayes Weier for InformationWeek. It did not appear in their print publication but was available to subscribers online through an alert download at www.informationweek.com/alert/socialnetworks.

Tracking LEED Credits in Project Software

I recently corresponded with Houston Neal from Software Advice (www.softwareadvice.com). Houston ran across PMTips while researching how to use software to track LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) credits. Houston commented that they are seeing a lot of building contractors (and LEED APs) use construction software to manage LEED projects. As a result, some software vendors are starting to add LEED credit tracking capabilities to their software offerings.

A portion of Houston Neal’s article is included below…

Track LEED v3 Credits in Project Management Software

Given the recent deadline for registering LEED v2.2 projects, we were reminded of a post we wanted to write: how construction project management software can be used to track LEED credits.

Tracking LEED credits requires software functionality similar to that required for more traditional construction project management. Consequently, a few leading vendors have re-purposed their technology to make this possible; others have customers who have developed their own work-arounds.

We expect to see a lot more software development as the number of annual LEED projects continues to grow. In the meantime, we’ve researched what’s available, how it works and how you can benefit from it. Here’s the scoop.

To Start, LEED Requires Strong Document Control

Tracking LEED credits is a document-intensive process. Just ask any experienced LEED Accredited Professional (AP). Submittal documentation includes drawings, receipts, product spec sheets, photos, commission plans and more. Adding to the clutter, numerous project members will access and edit these documents.

Project management software, especially web-based systems, act as a repository for the storage and retrieval of critical project documents. Simply upload a document into the system, then attach it to the appropriate LEED-credit log. From there you can track the history of a document, see every change that has been made and who made it.

Additional Benefits

Aside from the aforementioned benefits, project management software can be used to schedule and coordinate important project dates (e.g. commissioning sessions), it can give you a competitive edge to win more LEED projects and it provides the document tracking required to get AP accreditation.

Finally, project management software mitigates risk. There are big financial ramifications if you fall from a gold to silver, or off the podium entirely. As Courtemanche explained to us, “Just as accounting software has become a ’source of truth’ for financial reporting, project management software is a source of truth for LEED certification.”

Future Potential

In terms of development, we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is great potential for software vendors to create advanced features and functionality to make LEED tracking a less complicated process. Maybe we’ll even see a “click to submit” function for companies to submit electronically to the USGBC.

In the meantime, here are a few of our ideas. Feel free to leave a comment if you have other suggestions.

• Executive dashboard – Shows up-to-date LEED scorecard and latest project activity
• Portfolio roll-up – Ability to look at a “portfolio” view of all past and current LEED projects
• Resource database – Share best practices and case studies with other APs and contractors
• ROI/IRR Analysis – Calculate internal rate of return for a building based on discounted cash flows and investment costs
• Submittal templates – Use templates to generate indoor air quality (IAQ) plans, construction waste management plans, credit interpretation requests (CIR) and other submittals

To view Houston’s full article including specific software discussions and screenshots go to Track LEED v3 Credits in Project Management Software. Feel free to comment on this topic either here at PMTips or at Software Advice.

Project support unit to conduct training in project management

As reported at SKNVibes.

Roadtown, Tortola - The Ministry of Finance’s Project Support Service Unit (PSSU) will conduct a series of training workshops on the Basics of Project Planning and Management beginning on July 22.

The training, to be held at the PSSU conference room located on the third floor of RFG Building at Road Town round-about at 10 a.m., will introduce participants to the basic need-to-know concepts of managing projects.  Participants will be exposed to standard forms and tools developed for use throughout the public service.  The topics to be covered during the training will include an introduction to the PSSU; What is Project Management? and Project Planning and Management.

During the training session participants will also be introduced to the revised British Virgin Islands Government Project Management Guidelines and will be shown how to utilise the document to achieve optimum results when managing projects.

According to the unit the principal purpose of the guidelines is to support the efforts of ministries or departments to more effectively plan, implement and monitor capital investment projects in a manner consistent with stated objectives, and within the limits of financial and other resource constraints.
Manager of PSSU Ms. Shaina Smith told the Department of Information and Public Relations in a GIS Radio Report interview that project management allows the Ministry of Finance and the Government on a whole to “achieve value for money”.

“By planning projects out we are able to properly assign a cost, as well as a schedule, so that we will know how much time it would take and how much money it will cost and this can help us make informed decisions,” she said.

Ms. Smith added, “In keeping with Government’s desire to achieve a more targeted and results-oriented expenditure programme, the guidelines seek to achieve value for money by more consistently realising project objectives with optimal results.”

… read more..