New Project Management

Paradigms:

Iterative and Agile

Management

Innovating the Future

PMI Nashville April 29&30, 2013

Rodger Oren, PhD, PMP

• Where to start..

• Iterative

• Agile

• Denouement

Agenda

• Processes

• Waterfall isn’t working

• Business moves too fast

• Discontinuities (change is everywhere!)

• People

• Culture considerations

• Organization culture supportive?

• Project (group) culture supportive?

• You are an organizational change agent (consultant)

Help!

Where to start..

• People

• Hierarchical Organization -- Baby steps

• Start with iterative approach (spiral, RuP, etc.)

• “incremental thinking is fundamental to agile methods and crucial to

bridging the two methods” (Crosstalk magazine, May 2004)

• If iterative works .. push the envelope

• eXtreme Programming? Scrum?

• Market Organization – run ‘till tackled

• Technical

• Mobile, tablets.... What’s next? Something!

Help!

Where to start..

• Web enrollment, attestation, meaningful use determination

• Rapid change as eligibility rules change

• In flight missile maintenance

• Quality parameters

• Audit/Appeal capability

• Payment automation

• Schedule of events

• Start phase 1 (5/9/2011 to 9/30/2011)

• Start phase 2 after 1 month of phase 1 (7/11/2011 to 12/16/2011)

• Start phase 3 when phase 1 is complete (10/24/2011 to 12/20/2011)

The Project – Provider Incentive Program

Iterative

• 3rd party vendor for date sensitive deliverable

• Three (3) phases

• Phase 1 – four (4) months – 3 iterations (3 releases)

• Phase 2 – five (5) months – 3 iterations (3 releases)

• Phase 3 – two (2) months – 1 iteration (1 release)

• After all phases move to Operational Support

• Phase 3 added during project execution

• Light methodology

• Light documentation

• High degree of user input, testing, interaction

• Progress payments using EV & ES

The Project – Provider Incentive Program

Iterative

• Processes

• EV and ES work!

• Do not measure with a single metric

• Keep an eye on the critical path, on milestones

• Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!

• People

• Culture changes with metrics

• Subjective (alchemy) becomes objective (chemistry)

• Just tell me what number you want

Lessons Learned

Iterative

• Other members in the account are watching and asking about this approach

• Organizational Culture is key success factor

• Organization, business unit, workgroup unit

• Sprint 0

• 3 user stories

• 42 story points

• Deemed successful

• Sprint 0.1

• 50 story points are in the iteration

Initial Sprints -- Points of interest

Agile

• Processes

• Scrum can work in the public sector

• People

• Involved Product Owner

• Product Owner attending all meetings

• Product Owner pleasant to work with

• Product Owner signoff

• Esprit de Corps

• Team motivated

• Team enthusiastic

• Strong cohesion

Sprint 0 -- Lessons Learned – what worked

Agile

• Processes

• Scrum Master (aka Project Manager) is multi-tasking too

much to other projects and efforts!

• People

• SME involvement

• Need EDI & windows SME help

• Technical

• Missing test environment to support Scrum processes

• Can’t have 1-2 day delay in a 10 day sprint!

Sprint 0 -- Lessons learned – what didn’t work so well

Agile

• “one of the finest benefits I already see is the team-building benefit”

• “I sense an entrepreneurial spirit”

• “it makes for a solid foundation of a very capable and cohesive team”

• “it closes the door on miscommunication, misconceptions and

assumptions”

• “nirvana for a technical person”

• “I’m happy that someone thinks we tech folks actually count”

• “everyone is on the same page at all times, any deviation means the whole

team is re-aligned”

• “waterfall caused many misalignments, but this doesn’t seem to do that”

Team comments/feedback

Agile

• Iterative efforts

• All Payer Claims Database Project Re-boot

• CORE compliancy

• portal retrofit/re-architecture for Provider

• 835, electronic RA

• Eligibility Modernization Project (ACA)

• Agile

• Continued sprints with EDI

• Informatics sprints to start

• Waterfall

• InterChange system

we continue...

Denouement

• Christensen & Templin (2002, Spring). EAC Evaluation Methods: Do They Still Work?

Acquisition Review Quarterly, 9(2), 105-116.

• Cameron & Quinn (1999). Diagnosing and changing organizational culture. Reading:

Addison-Wesley.

• Henderson & Zwikael. (2008, April). Does Project Performance Stability Exist? …a re-

examination of CPI and evalation of SPI(t) Stability. Crosstalk, Journal of Defense Software

Engineering, 21(4), 7-13.

• Walter Lipke .. http://www.earnedschedule.com

• Paul McMahon. (2004, May). Bridging Agile and Traditional Development Methods: A

Project Management Perspective. Crosstalk, Journal of Defense Software Engineering, 17(5),

16-20.

References

QUESTIONS?