Project Management from a Distance – Part 4

In Part 3 of this six-part series, we covered the concept of what type of project and IT work seems to work best for telecommuting. In Part 4, we’ll discuss what setup you need to make it work for you if you choose to try to go with the telecommuting option for managing your projects:

Part 1 – Why remote?

Part 2 – Will it work for you?

Part 3 – What type of job enables remote PM?

Part 4 – What setup do you need?

Part 5 – Negotiating when it’s not an obvious move

Part 6 – Staying the course

Basic Setup

There is not likely to be anything groundbreaking discussed here. What you probably assume you need is exactly what I’m going to list here. In fact, if I leave something out, I’d appreciate hearing from you, but I’ll list what’s worked for me:

• High-speed cable modem or similar internet connection
• Secured wireless router
• Laptop (or two…I’ll explain)
• Mobile phone (go Blackberry or similar if you can with access to email)
• Regular phone with a good speaker phone option connected either to a land-line or to a VoiP option
• All-in-one printer for printing, scanning and the rare need to fax
• Free online fax sending (easier than using your all-in-one)
• Freeconferencecall.com account (good for a backup if your company conference line is tied up or if you are independent)

I won’t go into detail on all of these…most are pretty self-explanatory. However, there are a few I’ll touch on in a little more detail:

Laptop(s)

I’ve gone Mac and love it. But I hang on to my XP machine just in case. And I probably will always make sure I have one around as a backup. MS Project isn’t made for the Mac at this point and it may never be. There are other options available to the PM like Open Projects and many web-based options including ProjectOffice.net. However, having that option – just in case there’s a problem and I’m at the 11^th hour – to utilize a legit copy of MS Project on a Windows machine makes me feel more comfortable. I’ve not needed to do that since I purchased my Macbook in March of this year, but it’s nice to know I can if I ever have to.

Free Online Faxing

I hate using my HP All-in-one printer for faxing because I only have one home line – no dedicated fax line. Using one of the free sending services where you’re essentially uploading a pdf file and faxing it is very easy and it’s never let me down. I highly recommend it. Receiving faxes can be a little trickier – I usually have to talk the sender into scanning it in and sending it as a pdf or an image file. If they want me to have it bad enough, they’ll usually do it.

Home Phones with a Good Speaker Phone Option

This one was on my critical list. I was recently on a six-month project that required nearly daily conference calls. Some were vendor demos through webex meetings with associated conference calls and they could last up to six hours. I needed a good speaker phone option so that I could hear and sound like I was on a regular phone. There was no way I was going to wear a headset for that long! I found a setup – ultimately going with an offering from Philips.

Summary

The key is to have all the communication methods available to you just as you would if you were at the office. It doesn’t need to be high-end, it just needs to work. This is basically the setup I’ve had for the past three years and it’s not let me down yet.

More on Green Project Management

I previously wrote about “Going Green with IT Project Management” and was interviewed by Projects@Work for an article entitled “Greening Your Projects.” I realize there are a lot of things we can do as employees, Project Managers, IT leaders, etc. to go green and help decrease ours and our company’s carbon footprint. I touched on three in my article:

• Telecommuting
• Paperless Projects
• Incorporate More Green Solutions

I’d like to discuss this topic a little further and provide an example of one of the greenest projects I’ve worked on as PM/Consultant. It involved a market analysis performed for a government entity – something I covered indirectly in the 5-part article series entitled “Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution.”

Completely Green Example

I was on a team of 5 primary members with other revolving SMEs joining when needed. This analysis lasted for 6 months, was very successful, yet we never met face-to-face as a team once during that time and we never met face-to-face with the customer. As for the vendors, every demo performed – even the detailed ones that I recommend in Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos in “Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 4” – were performed online via webex.

All communications were by phone and email, even NDAs and other agreements and onboarding information at the beginning of the project. Everything electronic, everything remote. No travel, minimal costs, minimal waste, maximum profit. We were successful, the customer was happy, the customer incurred no contractor travel expenses and we finished on time. I can’t think of a more efficient project. The vendors didn’t even have to travel – though they did really want to travel for those final vendor demos. That was a frustration for them – but since this was a government project doing a market analysis for the government, that means there’s still a resulting RFP coming out and the vendors will have plenty of chances to travel to show off their solutions as they put together their proposals and proof of concept demos.

Summary

Not all projects can be run like this…I definitely realize that. I’ve been running projects remotely for most of the past three years or so and this is the first one that has been completely remote. Some have required more travel than others, but they’ve all required at least SOME travel. Usually to kickoff projects, design sessions, for UAT or deployment, but always some travel. So this was definitely not the norm, but an interesting lesson in how a project can be successful with a team that never meets in person and with a customer the team never meets.

I wouldn’t recommend it very often and I personally like very much working with the customer face-to-face when it makes sense and when it’s productive. I don’t believe in going onsite to “make a show” for no real productive reason. It’s costly and can be counterproductive. Plus, if you’re a PM and you’re onsite with a customer just to hold their hand, then it’s likely that you’re having to neglect – at least to some degree – the other 4-5 projects you’re running at the time.

Bottom-line – some or mostly remote is my preference. That, combined with as much elimination of paperwork as possible (which happens by default with remote management) makes for a very green project. But the customer is key and our #1 priority, so I definitely can recognize and understand the need to reach out to the customer to help ensure project success.

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.

Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 5

In Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, & Part 4 of this series on performing a market analysis, I’ve covered the following phases:

• Phase 1 – Documenting the Requirements
• Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources
• Phase 3 – Vendor Invitation
• Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1
• Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2
• Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos

We are now on to Phase 7 – Final Scoring and Selection.

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.

Final Team Review

Once all vendor reviews from Phase 6 have been completed and all after-the-demo meetings following each vendor demo have been completed and notes have been documented, then it’s time for the team to finalize scoring or ranking of each vendor in detail against the requirements or against groups of requirements.

Preferrably, and if time allows, give the team 3-5 working days from the last demo to do their own scoring before coming back together as a team.

Joint Scoring

Prior to holding a joint meeting, share all team scoring with each other and designate one individual to be the compiler/consolidator of all scoring info. If the number of requirements is too great, score the vendors on logical groups of requirements. At this point we’re only looking at 2-3 vendors so it shouldn’t be an overwhelming tasks.

During a joint session, perform final scoring of the vendors and discuss any concerns or contradictions. The goal is to come out of this session with a clear and agreed-upon winner. Anything less can lead to more lengthy discussions and working sessions.

Notifications

Once all discussions are over, clarifications and contradictions have been cleared up and a clear winner has been identified, it’s time for notifications. Now that this process is anywhere from 2-6 months old, the losers are going to need some detailed communication and debriefing. After all, they’ve put considerable time, effort and money into trying to win this work with you and your company, so it’s in your best interest to give them some details. Keep in mind, not all projects go well and if the winner performs poorly, then you may need to call on one of these runner-up vendors to step in…so part company amicably, if at all possible.

Notification of the winner should be much easier. However, there is one thing I left out that should be a part of Phase 6 unless the it’s already known or obvious – and that’s cost. As part of the Phase 6 detailed demos and presentation, the vendors should also submit project cost estimates which would include software costs, maintenance agreements, and implementation estimates. These must become part of the scoring and evaluation performed on the final 2-3 vendors because, as we know, cost is always a factor.

However, because you’ve been going through a very detailed and lengthy process to find the most qualified vendor, cost should not be inserted as a factor until you are down to your final selections. By this time, any of the 2-3 vendors could likely provide a suitable solution, so it’s appropriate to base your final decision, at least in part, on cost. To consider cost earlier in the process while some of the vendors still in the running may not be suitable, could be detrimental to the final outcome.

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.

Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 4

In Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3 of this series on performing a market analysis, I’ve covered the following phases:

• Phase 1 – Documenting the Requirements
• Phase 2 – Identify the Potential Sources
• Phase 3 – Vendor Invitation
• Phase 4 – Vendor Research – Round 1
• Phase 5 – More Detailed Vendor Research – Round 2

We are now on to Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos, which will involve very deep dives into each remaining vendor’s product offerings against your detailed requirements.

Phase 6 – Final Vendor Demos

At the conclusion of Phase 5, we narrowed the vendor field from 4-6 vendors down to a final list of 2-3 vendors. During Phase 5 you most likely laid out the remainder of the process of the 4-6 vendors you were still considering, but we’ll detail that here at the beginning of Phase 6.

In this phase, we will:

• Provide the vendors with a lengthy list of detailed requirements
• Setup detailed face-to-face vendor demos either onsite at the customer location (that’s us) or at a centralized location (really only necessary if the customer has a dispersed team)
• Meet as a team following each detailed vendor demo to perform scoring, compare notes, make preliminary decisions about the vendor

Detailed Requirements

If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to share a very detailed list of requirements with each of the remaining vendors. What you’re looking for in this phase is to witness a demo tailored to your final solution in as much detail as possible to help you and your team make the best and final choice of a vendor solution. This can really only be accomplished by giving them everything you can in the way of information about what you need your ‘to-be’ solution and processes to look like.

Try to stay away from giving them too much direction about what you want to see. After all, the winning vendor is going to be expected to fully understand your requirements, notice where they are week and ask for more info, and configure their solution to your needs. If you have to do the work for them along the way then they’re not the right vendor.

Face-to-Face Detailed Demos

Now is the time to meet the vendors face-to-face. You’ve given them every detailed piece of information about what you need and you’ve given them a period of time (probably 2 weeks or more) to put together a detailed presentation and demo that will be tailored – at least in terms of discussion – toward how they can meet your requirements.

If your undertaking is large enough and warrants the drooling that would go along with it, then it may call for asking the vendors to put together a working prototype of what they would implement in your environment. This could only be asked of the largest of undertakings where winning this contract could make or break the vendor. No vendor is going to go to this time or effort for a normal implementation – the costs would be far too high. And if you need to go down this route, understand that you will need to give the vendors months, not weeks, to prepare for these detailed demos.

My recommendation is to stay away from working prototypes if at all possible and ask the vendors to perform very detailed deep dives into their offerings while addressing your specific requirements along the way.

Post Demos Reviews

As a team, conduct post demos reviews, compare notes and do some preliminary scoring of the vendor’s ability to meet your specific requirements. Because your requirements list is very long at this point, this process will take a considerable amount of time and needs to be done immediately following each demo so the information is fresh in everyone’s mind. It’s a good idea to do this separately as individuals and then come back together to discuss and agree on final scorings for each vendor on each requirement or groups of similar requirements or come up with an ‘average’ score for each requirement or group of requirements for each vendor. This will be critical when doing the final comparison, scoring and decision-making in Phase 7.

Next

In Phase 7 we will discuss the process of performing final scoring, identifying the final selection, notifications across all vendors and what to do with the runner-ups.