Linking Design-Centric Company with Agile Principles

Flexibility is critical factor to solve problems and tolerate fails of our technical teams. First, the right understand of what New Product Introduction (NPI) method is and the importance of his adoption helps to follow formal processes involved with user needs and technical feasibility. Second, it clear for me that high-tech companies gave us the notion that satisfy business requirements and be robust against failure is important just like teamwork and creativity of a younger designer.

If you want to solve a problem through design, I have a scenario that can illustrate. When I worked for a semiconductor Design Center in Brazil we reviewed and critiqued the schedule and product requirements several times with verification team in India and potential end-users in Mexico. Insights gained from the critique are used to determine the improvements in development. With these repeated steps, we reduced scope creep in several projects. Program and Portfolio Managers are required to simplify and humanize complex problems.

To sum up, the complexity of the semiconductor design-center company that I worked for makes me understand that everything starts by the respect for people and continuously improve of customer’s experience independently of their region of the planet.

In conclusion, Agile principles emphasis that best requirements and designs emerge from self-organizing teams. The highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of value. Changes of requirements are welcome, even late in development. Agile harness change for the customer's competitive advantage. 

Eder Alves, PhD, PMP®

O Dr. Eder Alves é fundador e principal consultor da PredictON. Possui background acadêmico em Administração de Empresas e Ciência da Computação com áreas de concentração em estratágia empresarial, inovação e gerenciamento de projetos. Adquiriu conhecimentos ao longo da vida universitária em sistemas de tecnologia da informação, gerenciando projetos complexos e programas para empresa globais como IBM e Freescale Semiconductor. É portador das credenciais PMP e Scrum Master Certified.

Project Management of Business Intelligence

If you are looking for higher relative efficient projects of Business Intelligence then your energy and focus needs to comply with customer needs. To succeed in a Business Intelligence, term more modern, we better to have excellent business discovery phase or initial project in order to list the requirements of business analysis. It is also important to know about market segment for specific companies and balanced allocation of resources.

The knowledge of the team about phases and correct methodology collaborates to succeed in projects like that. This profile of Business Intelligence Project Manager is very important. The strategic of a lot of companies points to increase sales in this area of business.

The integration between customer side people and consultants should provide profound visions of the big picture in terms of architecture and connectivity. Please look the phases below:
a. Business discovery;
b. Data modeling (logical and physical);
c. Database parameterization of data warehouse, also sizing;
d. Connectivity across servers (database and OLAP);
e. ETL – Extraction, Transformation, and Load activities;

f. Security setup;
g. Development of reports and other objects;
h. Training of end users across business area.

Of course, we can go through other tasks and different names. It is depends of the project. But if you have someone with whole process in mind it will help a lot when going through execution. Under customer perception the confident communication supports the project. This confidence can make the project robustness, avoiding worries about time and cost forecast.

Tree profiles are vital in the execution these kind of projects. A data modeler of multidimensional schema (star, snowflake, and hybrid), also cube generation knowledge is required. The second one needs to know how the database works transforming un-integrated data into a data warehouse with historic and integrated data. Performance is required to be always on the table for people working in the Business Intelligence projects. The last one is a professional with skills to talk with customers, understand their needs, and supplies outputs that comply with the requirements. Simplified reports that fit those needs of decision making are an advantage. Maybe a professional with an MBA plus Computer Science degree will occupy this position with energy and focus.

Regular Trainings and academic are more important than websites due the biased content. However, I recommend some ones for Business Intelligence projects, please find below:

http://www.bi-verdict.com/fileadmin/dl_temp/5d57d42da6d781c96b949ac0b4e3edeb/market.htm

(Website from Germany)

Note: Hyperion and Cognos above of some tools and below Microsoft. Microsoft is the product supplier competitor to be beat in the Business Intelligence and Data Warehouse marketplace. However, time only until 2007. Accessed: 05/23/2011

http://imagesrv.gartner.com/pv_obj_cache/pv_obj_id_623AFBB90F102914DBED494D8651B4EA70790A00/filename/article4.pdf

(Website from USA)

Note: The Magic Quadrant of Gartner helps in identify who is able to implement solutions of Business Intelligence from now to the future in the corporations. Services of Business Intelligence are very important. Products of databases, ETL – Extraction Transformation and Load, and OLAP – On-line Analytical Processing reports are facilities for people working. Accessed: 05/23/2011

I mean choose the right professionals and consultancy company to develop your data warehouse and OLAP visions are more important than buy products. The tools are crucial point of BA project success since the project team develops business requirements with performance for end-users and integrated databases (data warehouses, cubes, and data marts).

No references today. Only some experience about Business Intelligence.

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Considerations about Projects, Programs and Portfolio Management

A portfolio refers to a collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped together to facilitate effective management in order to meet strategic business objectives [2]. Portfolio management ensures that interrelationships between programs and projects are identified and that resources (e.g., people, funding) are allocated in accordance with organizational priorities.

By the way, maybe it’s important to distinguish program and portfolio management. A program is defined as a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually [2]. Programs focus on achieving the benefits expected from the portfolio as determined by strategic organizational objectives [3].

These two definitions come from Project Management Institute – PMI. However, we can find others authors trying to improve or collaborate to discover what is right way and words to describe a portfolio management.
The Standard for Portfolio Management shows the role to be in charge of projects, programs and portfolios. Project managers manage the project team to meet the project objectives [3]. Program managers manage the program staff and the project managers; they provide vision and overall leadership [3]. Portfolio managers may manage or coordinate portfolio management staff [3].

When thinking about portfolio management for different approaches. It’s important to differentiate between portfolio of projects and IT investments. IT portfolio management is a proven framework for better decision making regarding new and existing IT investments. “IT portfolio management can and has been applied to infrastructure and networks, data and information, hardware and applications, processes, people, and supporting foundations” [4]. It means not only projects or programs.

Maizlish and Handler (2005) [4], analyzing the step-by-step of IT portfolio management to unlock the business value of technology mentions that IT portfolio management is a tool that supports companies during times of both robust and economic downturn. In accordance with [4], most companies maintain a list of more IT projects than their budgets can support and ironically, many business and IT managers are unaware of important performance indicators like types of ideas and concepts being worked within R&D, how many IT projects are in the development cycle and their alignment with the future strategic direction, amount of resources allocated or risks associated with each IT investment.

Coffman et al. (2009) [1] when explaining how to drive IT performance through projects portfolio management comment about possibility to obtain changes in the way IT interacts with the organization. “This can make IT into a true strategic partner, focused less on technology and more on impacting the long-term health of the company” [1].

The strategic of organizations and their alignment with projects always come over discussion when thinking about how to improve the business opportunities and in the same time acquire operational efficiency managing portfolios, programs, and projects. A grouping of projects in programs or portfolios that reflect their relationship and analysis of their interactions are pointed as importante by the book of PMI named Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) [2].

According with the PMBOK [2], in mature project management organizations, project management exists in a broader context governed by program management and portfolio management. Organizational planning impacts the projects by means of project prioritization based on risk, funding, and the organization’s strategic plan.

Intermediate levels of groupings, named programs, can supply possibilities of controlling and monitoring projects with similarities. Another grouping as portfolios supports to focus on firm’s strategic management. Some definitions of portfolio management are based on organizational strategic and programs operational benefits are in the center of the approach.

These are about readings and thoughts in my free time. Please, find below the references.

1.COFFMAN, H.; MURALI, V.; CARDENAS, J.; DeSanto, J. P (2008). “Driving IT Performance Through Project Portfolio Management”.

2.Institute, Project Management (2008). “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) - Fourth Edition”. Newton Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc., ANSI/PMI 99-001-2008.

3.Institute, Project Management (2008). "The Standard for Portfolio Management, Second Edition". Project Management Institute. Newton Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc.

4.MAIZLISH, B.; HANDLER, R (2005). “IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step – Unlocking the Business Value of Technology”. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ISBN-13 978-0-471-64984-8.

Eder Alves, PhD, PMP®

O Dr. Eder Alves é fundador e principal consultor da PredictON. Possui background acadêmico em Administração de Empresas e Ciência da Computação com áreas de concentração em estratágia empresarial, inovação e gerenciamento de projetos. Adquiriu conhecimentos ao longo da vida universitária em sistemas de tecnologia da informação, gerenciando projetos complexos e programas para empresa globais como IBM e Freescale Semiconductor. É portador das credenciais PMP e Scrum Master Certified.

What is the Role of a Portfolio Manager?

A portfolio management approach needs to organize a framework in order to find the proper subset of projects that reflects better decisions when evaluating risks, resource allocation, costs, and quality. This framework also is required to integrate competitive advantage and operational effectiveness in a balanced decision maker structure. The Portfolio Manager guarantees the right flow of this process.

First of all, the Portfolio Manager needs to motivate the Project Managers - PMs. The controls and monitoring of each program or project are related with the feedback of PMs and their status reports, normally weekly. In a PMO – Project Management Office structure where meetings are often clouded or in virtual environment (Lotus Live, Live Meeting, Net Meeting, conference call, and others), the communication of the chairman and PMs is an important point to obtain success in report the issues and propose solutions and decisions. So, high level of communication and empathy of the Portfolio Manager is the second great skill required for them.

What about culture and values? That’s a good question. Portfolio Manager sometime works with people from different parts of the world. Understand how to talk with them and how to have patience about their different perspectives makes the difference when manage PMs in today’s globalized world. Thing about wake up at 6:00AM to have a meeting with PMO team in India, can you do that? If yes, it is a good start.


Thinking about the strategic direction of the organization, the Portfolio Manager is responsible to certify that silos of interests and individual finance concerns don’t damage the competitive position of the company as a whole. It is very common that projects create a compromised group of individuals focused on success of their projects. The management and solution for conflict of interest between PMs and functional managers are another great task for Portfolio Manager. They need to acquire focus on the strategy of the firm as an entire group of people looking for success in a collaborative environment.

iDEA Project Evaluation

Project evaluation problem for organizations is a decision-making effort. Members of the Project Management Office - PMO deal with the follow question "which is more important to assign priority to project, program or portfolio?. Firms are required to taking in consideration financial, operation and resource availability indicators.

Metrics or feedbacks from project managers are not a guarantee of success. New techniques and approach like data envelopment analysis (DEA) and balanced scorecard (BSC) are trying to help managers to solve the questions "what kind of projects or/and portfolio needs to be freeze, hold or kill?" or "which project is under the efficiency frontier and which project is required to acquire better performance with inputs supplied?

The use of methodology based on use of portfolio management and BSC metric determination to set restrictions, inputs, and outputs on DEA models can develop a model that treats data of inputs and outputs in accordance with scorecards definition.

First, the aggregation of projects and their inputs and outputs is required. Second, evaluate the scores and relative efficiency. This framework may find proper subset of projects that reflects better decisions when evaluating risks, resource allocation, costs, and quality.

A case study with semiconductor projects evaluated nineteen projects using DEA-VRS input oriented model. The scorecards for projects points at delivery precision, design revisions, cycle time, development cost were used as outputs. Unplanned feature and schedule conformance were the inputs. The results of the integrated model showed twelve, from nineteen, efficient projects.

DEA innovate in terms of project efficiency evaluation. An important point is that the approach doesn't focus on the application subject's areas but in indicators of performance for every project configured in a DEA model as Decision Maker Unit.