Should Requirement Quality be Measured?

Measuring requirement quality can reveal opportunities for long-term improvements in requirement definition, can show you where to invest for improvements, and can help you develop your team.

Opportunities for improvement

If requirement quality isn’t measured, there will be no future improvement in requirements. Every project – in terms of requirements quality – will be a rerun of the last project. No lessons learned. No forward progression.

Did your last project have rework? Were there any crisis situations in testing? Were there customer complaints? A review of the last project’s requirements may show you how to avoid some of those same headaches on your current and future projects. Read more »

Good Requirements vs. Rework – Part 3

The post is made possible by the great people at Seavus, creators of online Project Management tools such as ProjectOffice.net, Project Viewer, and Project Planner.  Please visit their site for more information.

As we concluded Part 2, we discussed what we all really already know – that bad requirements usually lead to cost or budget overruns, project timeframe slippages, frustrated and overworked employees, dissatisfied customers, lost profitability, and quite possibly shortened tenure with your company.

The ultimate cost of requirement errors and omissions can be huge beyond just the rework factor. Requirements drive more than just project and product quality. They drive product end-user usability. They drive the personnel skill levels for both product development and operation. They determine how the product will be used. Requirements for ease of operation, for example, lead to products that require less training before use and less time to accomplish tasks. Omitting operability requirements will result in a product that is inexpensive to purchase but costly to use. Worse, end-user operators may make more mistakes in the product’s use. Read more »

A Lessons Learned Template

Lessons Learned – often talked about, a discussion that is usually planned…but often forgotten.  You’re at the end of the project and the plan is to pull both teams together to go over lessons learned in great detail and for the benefit of all – but it often doesn’t happen.  Team members move on to other projects or post-deployment issues are taking up everyone’s time.

Lessons Learned sessions can be very helpful – and if you’re luck enough to keep yours on the project schedule, then this template may help you.  It looks a little rough pasted into this post and one of the tables turned into a bullet list, but I think you’ll get the idea.

As always, if you want the Word doc template, let me know…and please feel free to share your version as well.

PROJECT LESSONS-LEARNED DOCUMENT

The purpose of this template is to help the project team share knowledge gained from experience so that the entire organization may benefit. A successful Lessons-Learned program will help project teams:

• Repeat desirable outcomes
• Avoid undesirable outcomes.

A. Your project team should begin to use this document at its first project meeting. Continually recording Lessons-Learned throughout the project is the best way to ensure that they are accurately recorded. Topics to consider include all of the following (feel free to change the list). The Lessons Learned Checklist is also available as a guide to discussion.

B. At the end of your project, use this document to summarize your experience.

During your discussions:

• Be positive
• Do not place blame!
• Focus on successes as well as failures
• Indicate which strategies contributed to success
• Indicate which improvement strategies would have the greatest impact

The signatures above indicate an understanding of the purpose and content of this document by those signing it. By signing this document, they agree to this as the formal Project Lessons-Learned Document.

Project Communications: The Project Manager’s Responsibility

I’ve long held (and documented deep in these articles) that one of the project manager’s key roles on any given project is that of primary communicator. The PM must disseminate information all the time – in the form of emails, phone calls, status reports, project status meetings, issues and risks lists, etc. Not all project communications originates from the PM, but it all goes through the PM at one time or another and if there’s a communication breakdown, the PM must be on it to correct it.

I was reviewing Carl Pritchard’s book “The Project Management Communications Toolkit” and was particularly interested in his section on The Role of the Project Manager in Communications. I’m not saying I wholeheartedly agree, but I think it’s one person’s good view on the topic. It can be expanded further, as I’ve described above and for those of you interested, I do have a Communications Plan template available by email just for the asking – many readers have already received this from me over the last few months. Here’s Mr. Pritchard’s take on the subject…

The Role of the Project Manager in Communications

The role of the project manager is one of communications facilitator. That does not mean he or she sends all of the communications. It means that the project manager is responsible for ensuring that communications are sent, received, and (to the degree possible) understood. To accomplish that, the project manager can identify preferred communications modes for the critical stakeholders, assess the best means to enable those modes, and ensure the integrity of the process as the project continues.

To identify preferred communications modes, the project manager should assess a representative sample of the project’s stakeholders. In a small project, this may be done by interviews. In larger projects, this may be accomplished by surveys.

Once the communications modes have been identified, the next task in the communications plan—enabling those communications modes—is critical. The project manager may need to establish e-mail protocols or telephone voice-mail etiquette. He or she may need to invest time and energy in constructing a project Web site or “virtual community” on the local-area network (LAN). He or she may need to identify the specific tools to be used (and tools to be avoided) based on customer and team needs. Regardless of the choice of technology or approach, guidance needs to be established to ensure consistent application. Without consistency, communications will eventually break down.

To ensure the integrity of the process, the project manager must test the system occasionally to ensure that messages are being received and understood. In one training organization, the president would occasionally plant brief, bizarre messages deep in his memoranda to test whether or not the entire message was being received. He learned that only a handful of his staff were really reading the entire document, and he changed his protocols as a result. The project manager who communicates well will find ways to test the integrity of the system, both in terms of message receipt and understanding. Just because an email is marked as “received” doesn’t ensure that it was actually read or understood. Validation through spot-checks is a reasonable means of working to improve the quality of message as it moves from sender to receiver. Talking to the senders about feedback and receivers about the messages is a first step toward identifying potential gaps.

Phases of a Construction Project Life Cycle – Part 4

In Part 4 we will examine the final two construction project phases as described by F. Lawrence Bennett in his book “The Management of Construction – A Project Lifecycle Approach.” In this final installment, we review the project operations and project closeout and termination phases.

Project operations phase

In presenting the contractor’s activities on the construction site, we will suggest, perhaps too simply, that the responsibilities involve three basic areas: monitoring and control, resource management and documentation and communication. Five aspects of monitoring and controlling the work are important. Actual schedule progress must be compared against the project program to determine whether the project is on schedule; if it is not, actions must be undertaken to try to bring the program back into conformance. Likewise, the cost status must be checked to establish how actual performance compares with the budget. An equally important part of monitoring and control is quality management, to assure that the work complies with the technical requirements set forth in the contract documents. In addition, the contractor has an important role to play in managing the work safely and in a way that minimizes adverse environmental impacts.

In managing the project’s resources, the contractor will, first, be concerned with assigning and supervising personnel and assuring that the labor effort is sufficiently productive to meet schedule, cost and quality goals. In addition, materials and plant must be managed so that these same goals are met. Because construction projects require large amounts of paperwork, a special effort is required to manage this documentation effectively. Examples include the various special drawings and samples that must be submitted to the owner or design professional for approval prior to installation, the frequent need to respond to requests for changes in the project after the on-site work has begun and the all-important process for periodically assessing the value of work completed and requesting payment for this work. Various on-line and other electronic means are available to assist contractors with document management and project communications.

Project closeout and termination phase

Finally, as the project nears completion, a number of special activities must take place before the contractor’s responsibilities can be considered complete. There are the various testing and startup tasks, the final cleanup, various inspections and remedial work that may result from them and the process of closing the construction office and terminating the staff’s employment. In addition, a myriad of special paperwork is required, including approvals and certifications that allow the contractor to receive final payment, a set of as-built drawings that include all changes made to the original design, operating manuals, warranties and a final report. The contractor will also be responsible for transferring and archiving project records and will conduct some sort of project critique and evaluation; operator training may also be part of the contractor’s contractual responsibilities.