Agile Project Management and a SIEBEL PM Job

A rather thought provoking article I came across on Agile Project Management.

Agile teams: Focus on the people rather than the process

Rick Freedman believes the agile PM’s most important roles are to create a collaborative environment that enables teams to achieve creative results and to encourage contributors to focus on group goals and agendas rather than the individual.

The NBA Finals are over, and LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson has broken the record of the legendary Red Auerbach by leading his team to the NBA championship for the 10^th time. Jackson’s ability to coach superstar players Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, and to get superstar results from role players Lamar Odom and Derek Fisher, illustrates that leadership matters, and that a group of skilled, confident, and occasionally arrogant individuals can be guided to success and can coalesce as a team.

While other coaches struggle with players who are more interested in individual statistics and personal highlight reels than in getting team results, Jackson has been able to channel the ambitions and skills of his players, both in Chicago and Los Angeles, towards team achievement. Shaquille O’Neal and Scottie Pippen make winning championships a bit easier, but, despite all the outstanding players in the NBA, no other coach demonstrates Jackson’s ability to inspire teams to great outcomes.

What does the NBA have to do with agile PM?

Like Jackson, agile project managers often have teams composed of supremely skilled and confident contributors. Like Jackson, many agile project managers often struggle to get arrogant or immature team members to subsume their personal ambitions and instead focus on team results. And, like Jackson, agile project managers must develop a leadership style that inspires and enables team members to achieve.

The coaching metaphor is, in my view, an appropriate analogy to illustrate the type of project leadership that agile methods require. Great agile project managers are coaches, with the critical understanding that, whether it’s shooting hoops or developing software, only the player can make the right decision under the pressure of the moment. Creating the environment that enables the experts to do what they do and setting the strategy while allowing the players to create are attributes of a winning coach and an agile project leader.

SIEBEL CRM Senior Project Manager.

Our global multinational client in the french speaking part of Switzerland is now looking for a Senior Siebel Project Manager/Program Manager to join the project on a long term basis here in the French speaking part of Switzerland.

THE ROLE:
Senior PM for Siebel implementation with role evolving to Program Manager (multiple projects/more countries) as Siebel initiative is planned across next 3 years. You will be in charge of the overall Siebel global implementation.

YOU NEED:
At least 8 years CRM projects, Siebel experience (SFA/BI/Call Centre), global/large scale projects(multi-country deployment), strong project management skills (end-to-end project life cycle, good command of all project areas; technical, process, change, etc), process manufacturing experience, strong communications skills, experience of vendor management.

• University degree or equivalent. Good education is mandatory.
• Fluency in English (written and spoken)
• At least 10 years large complex international experience in delivery of IT/consulting services in the area of CRM with in-depth expertise in implementing CRM software such as Oracle CRM/Siebel
• Experience on business process re-engineering;
• Experience in international working environments; Experience of off-shore delivery model
• Management of project teams
• Advanced business consulting competencies

Nice to have:

• Deep understanding of leading and emerging IT solutions; experience of Siebel on-demand will be appreciated
• Selling skills on high added value services
• Good business acumen for marketing and sales in specific industry/process manufacturing/pharmaceutical/chemical are an advantage

A Quick Guide to Performing a Vendor Market Analysis for Your Large Project

This is basically a “Quick Guide” version of the 5 part piece I wrote on “Performing a Market Analysis for your Sotware Project Solution.” In this scenario we assume your company needs a project handled and it’s going to require that an outside company has a hand in it and it’s important that you get the best because it’s going to be long and it’s going to be costly. It’s important to analyze the available options and make the right choice.

I’ve broken down the detailed market analysis into the 7 separate phases detailed below. For the full detail, start with Part 1 and read through all five articles covering the 7 phases in greater detail.

Phase 1 – Document the Requirements

It’s critical that you and your organization have detailed knowledge of your requirements and business processes going into a market analysis like this.

You need to know what your requirements are, what your ‘as-is’ business processes are and what you want your ‘to-be’ business processes…um…well, to be. If you don’t know that, then you’re not ready for this and you’re certainly not ready to move on to Phase 2.

Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources

Initially, you and your team need to identify who the main players are. Know which vendors you need to initially consider for this undertaking. Make the field too small and you won’t get a good cross-section of the offerings and capabilities. Make the field too large and you will spend too much time and money just narrowing the group down to the size it should have been in the first place.

Phase 3 – Vendor Initiation

Let’s assume you start with 8-10 vendors who are offering a software package or implementation that, at least on paper, comes close to what you visualize your end solution to be. In your gut you know that 3-4 of them probably won’t cut it, but they’re worth a closer look. Include those 3-4 ‘on-the-bubble’ vendors and let them play themselves out of consideration because one could surprise you and offer a reasonable solution at the best price.

To start things off, contact each of the vendors via email with the following information:

• An introduction of yourself including your contact information
• A summary of your project or software need
• An invitation to participate in the market analysis
• A proposed date/time for a one-on-one kickoff call

Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1

You can’t run the whole market analysis with 8-10 potential vendors. Well, you can, but it will be too lengthy and expensive. It makes more sense to break it into 2-3 rounds and eliminate some vendors along the way. At the conclusion of Round 1, I’d recommend trimming it by 3-4 vendors down to a maximum of 4-6 offerings.

For Phase 4:

• Send out a high-level questionnaire with some qualifying show-stopper questions (10-20 must-haves) on how the vendor meets the qualification
• Review/score the questionnaires as a team
• Remove 3-4 vendors from consideration based on the scoring
• Notify vendors being removed from the process and invite the remaining vendors to continue with the market research

Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2

For Phase 5:

• Contact the remaining 4-6 vendors via email and/or phone to invite them to continue with the market analysis and explain what is intended for this phase
• Provide a more detailed list of 20-40 requirements for the vendors to use in the round 2 demos – give them 1-2 weeks to prepare a demo that discusses their capabilities against those requirements (set these demos up as remote webex demos – face-to-face meetings are not necessary yet
• Following each demo gather as a team and discuss their pros and cons and conduct some sort of scoring for each vendor against your list of requirements
• Contact the 2-3 vendors that are being removed from contention
• Contact the 2-3 vendors that are moving on to the final round of consideration

Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos

In Phase 6, you will need to perform the following:

• Provide the vendors with a lengthy list of even more detailed requirements
• Setup detailed face-to-face vendor demos either onsite at the customer location (that’s you) or at a centralized location (really only necessary if you have a dispersed team)
• Request and receive project cost estimates from each vendor covering software costs, maintenance agreements and implementation costs (these are not expected to be final, binding cost estimates…just ballparks for scoring consideration)
• Meet as a team following each detailed vendor demo to perform scoring, compare notes, make preliminary decisions about the vendor

Phase 7 – Final Scoring and Selection

This phase will involve a final team review of the materials, demo notes and preliminary scoring, performance of joint scoring, determination of the finalist, and notification to the losers and the winner.

Be considerate with the notification to the runner-ups because they could be called in to fix a failed implementation should the chosen vendor not be able to perform. Remember, they’ve gone through a lengthy and costly process to get this far.

Now it is time to sit down with the chosen vendor and do the following:

• Negotiate a final price
• Provide an official Statement of Work
• Provide final requirements
• Define a draft project schedule
• Identify key milestones and deliverables
• Establish project team roles and members on both sides of the project
• Schedule a project kickoff

Summary

You’ve successfully completed a lengthy process to identify the best and final solution to your software need. Monitor the process closely early on so a switch in vendors can be made, if necessary, with minimal impact – both cost and timeline – to your company. However, move forward with confidence because at this point a considerable amount of effort has been expended by your SMEs to identify the best solution and you’ve found it.

Project Manager Needed

Location: Malaysia
Salary: £80000 per annum
Company: Leap 29 Ltd
Sector: Oil / Gas / Power
Job role: Civil engineer
Job type: Permanent

The client is one of the largest oil and gas production companies based in the Asian Pacific region and due to the increase development of one the key sites they are now looking to bring on board a project manager.

The appropriate candidate will be based in the region located close to Malaysia and this will be based on a rotation basis of denominations yet to be decided. A suitable candidate must be degree qualified and it would be advantageous if the candidate was a member of an engineering professional body.

The candidate must also have 10 years experience working within a project management position and this must be supported by experience of working within the oil and gas industry also. The candidate must exhibit and posses all the soft skills required of a senior program/ project manager, this included good analytical skills.

Due to the location of this project the client is only looking to bring on board a candidates that is of an Malaysian or Thai nationality and there is no room for movement on this prerequisite.
If you feel you are an eligible candidate for the above position, send a copy of your resume to the contact details below and I will be in contact in due course
Apply here.

Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed getting started on performing a market analysis for a large software project undertaking.  Utilizing a market analysis can help you, as the customer, select the best possible vendor and software solution for your project. 

So far, we’ve covered the following phases of the market analysis:

• Phase 1 – Document the Requirements – This phase requires that you – the customer – have your business processes well mapped out so you will be able to amply rate the potential vendors against what you need your “to-be” solution to be.
• Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources – Here you identify the key players in the market place.  These are the vendors that you will solicit input from and ask to perform demos, webex’s, etc. for you.  Of course, your project needs to be well worth their while…but we’re assuming a large enterprise-wide software undertaking that is likely to be big $$.
• Phase 3 – Beginning the Dog and Pony Show (really this should be called the Vendor Invitation phase) – In this phase, you make your first contact with the vendors, explain your needs and invite them to participate.  They, in turn, will start to ramp up for the analysis that they are about to participate in for the next few weeks.

Enough recap, let’s move on to the next phases.

Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1

As mentioned in Phase 3, let’s assume you’re looking at 8-10 vendors and those are the ones you’re inviting to the party.  If your project is pretty large – and we’re assuming it is – then you should have no trouble getting them interested and willing to participate.

Remember, you can’t run the whole market analysis with that many potential vendors.  Well, you can, but it will be too lengthy and expensive.  It makes more sense to break it into 2-3 rounds and eliminate some vendors along the way.  For Round 1, I’d recommend trimming it by 3-4 vendors down to a maximum of 4-6 offerings.

Initially, I suggest sending out a high-level questionnaire identifying some of the qualifying show-stoppers and asking for vendor responses on how they meet each qualification.  For example, if you need the software solution to run on Windows Vista or they can’t be considered, then that needs to be asked as part of the initial screening questionnaire.  If you need a vendor that has a particular expertise…for example has experience with large-scale government installations or is certified for ‘x’ or ‘y’ then you that needs to be included in the initial screening.  If you need a vendor’s software to run with SQL or else you can’t include them, then that needs to be asked as one of the intial screening questions.

Identifying 10-20 critical must-have items on the vendor questionnaire will enable you or your team to weed out those vendors that can’t even meet the minimal requirements of the undertaking.  It’s sort of like looking at the system requirements of a piece of software before you buy it.  If it doesn’t match your OS or your computer doesn’t meet it’s minimal requirements, then you’re not going to buy it.

Let’s assume that this initial screening removes 3-4 vendors and now you’re down to 4-6 vendors for the 2^nd round.  At this point you send emails – and follow-up with phone calls, if necessary – to each of the 3-4 vendors that are being eliminated. Thank them for their participation and explain that they do not meet some critical requirements for the engagement will not be considered further.

Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2

Now you’ve eliminated a few and you’re down to 4-6 vendors to move on to Round 2.  Contact those vendors via email and phone to invite them to continue with the market analysis and explain what is intended for Round 2. 

My suggestion for Round 2 is a high-level demo performed by each vendor outlining their software capabilities and particular expertise in relation to your needs for the project.  To allow each Round 2 participant to adequately prepare for their presentation I would suggest preparing a high-level version of your project requirements.  It’s still too soon to provide too much detail – we’ll save that for the next round and a more detailed demo from each finalist.  At this point we still want to keep it more high-level so as not to waste too much time and effort on vendors that aren’t going to make it to the finals.

Prepare the high-level requirements – you’re past the must-haves but you can identify another 20-40 critical needs of the system (or more or less depending on the number of requirements and the size of the project, I’m just picking a number here).  Send those to each of the vendors and give them 1-2 weeks to prepare for a webex demo of their software and expertise.  I’m suggesting webex for this round because face-to-face is not really necessary yet – save that for the next round and save the extra time and save the vendors the cost of travel.  A good idea would be to ask each vendor to record the webex and send it to you afterwards so that you’ll have it available for analysis should there be confusion over how well a vendor meets a requirement.

Next

Next will look at further reducing the number of vendors as we move toward finalizing a best and final solution for your project.

Knowledge Audits – Determining your Format

If you’ve conducted an audit in the past you know the pros and cons of both a Face-to-Face audit and a questionnaire.

The questions you need to ask yourself before you start out with an audit are as follows :

1. What is the purpose of my audit?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. How large is this group?
4. Is it very diverse?
5. How much time do i have?
6. How complex do i want this to be?

I’m sure you might put together a whole host of other questions as well, but these 6 should cover the basics when deciding upon a method.

While there is no doubt that a Face to Face audit would generate a huge amount of information it also raises the question of how much time you have to spend. Setting up meetings with a large number of people, expecting them to adhere to the schedule and then filtering out the noise in a face to face meeting all take time. In most instances this is something an auditor doesn’t have the luxury of.

A Questionnaire would be a likely alternative to someone who does not have the time to spend with face to face audits.

So how do you decide between the two? Simply put, factor in what you want to achieve, and how much time you have, not to mention the size of your target group. If its simple information you want then a questionnaire is definitely the way to go, a face to face audit wouldn’t actually be very much more effective in a case like this.

Over the next few posts we shall get into more details regarding knowledge audits.