pmi newsletter oct 2014 - pmi bangalore chapter€¦ · the highlight of the event were keynote...

Thanks and Best Wishes

Soumen De, PMP

[email protected]

Editor’s NoteEditor’s NoteDear Friends,

Greetings from PMI Bangalore India Chapter!

The month of September had significant events both at Chapter and National events. At

the Chapter, we had our Annual Members Meet (AMM) where we not only presented our

accomplishments on different fronts and presented our financials, but also got approval

on selected portion of our bylaws that will enable our Chapter to strive for operational excellence which in

turn will help us deliver significantly more value to our members. We also had the annual Signature PM

Footprints event in September which celebrated successful completion of 236 PM Footprints session

spread over eight years. To have this session run non-stop every fortnight is one accomplishment that

makes us all feel proud. The highlight of the event were keynote presentation by two seasoned speakers

who spoke on their personal experiences on the topic of entrepreneurship and leadership respectively.

This event reinforced our Chapter endeavor to provide our members a platform through which we all can

learn, share and grow from each other experiences.

thAt a national level, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan, was put on Mars orbit on 24

September 2014. India now joins the elite club of nations, i.e., the US, Russia and Europe to reach Mars

Orbit. It reached Mars orbit, as planned, in 323 days covering 650 million km distance. Over the next 6

months, Mangalyaan will study the mineral composition on Mars and also look for the presence of

methane, a chemical key to life on Earth. It is India's first interplanetary mission and Indian Space

Research organization (ISRO) has become the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after the Soviet space

program, NASA, and the European Space Agency. It is also the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first

attempt, and the first Asian nation to do so. The total cost of the mission was approximately $70 million

and is the cheapest inter-planetary mission ever to be undertaken since Martian exploration began. This

prompted our honorable Prime Minister to famously say that ride to Mars cost us Rs. 7/km compared to a

typical auto rickshaw ride of Rs. 10 /km. As Project Managers, it signifies the amount of cost management

done for this project. This was a demonstration of not only the deep technology capability but also strong

Project Management skills that our scientists at ISRO demonstrated to deliver this project as per plan.

There are plenty of information on this project in the internet and ISRO site. Do read more about the

Mangalyaan project at your leisure and share your key Project Management findings and learning with us.

Happy Reading.

Chapter News

Editorial Board

Volume - 2 - Issue 7 October 2014

-Capt. L. N. Prasad

Q. What is the cost effective

technique to achieve significant

improvements in organization's

project management

effectiveness called?

Chapter News

- Capt. L. N. Prasad

Project Based Organization

Culture . . .

- Seshadri Chatterjee

Pre Project Preparation

- Parvej Islam

Spotlight

Continuous Integration . . .

- Ranan Battacharya

Some Experiences during

Training . . .

- Chakravarthy Rajagopalan

The Lighter side of PM

- Sudheendra Koushik

DID YOU KNOW?

Co

nte

nts

Continued on Page 7...

PM Footprints: th On 11 September

Mr. Jacob Mathews, Supervisor,

Software Engineering Division Otivus

Inc. (Southern California) USA spoke

on the topic

"The Strategies

- Dealing with

North

American

Companies”.

thOn 27 September 2014 the Chapter celebrated ththe 8 PM Footprints Anniversary at Hotel Pride

Bangalore. Nearly 80 members of the Chapter

attended the celebrations. As part of the

anniversary two key note speakers Mr. Buddhadeb

Dasgupta of Nous Info systems and Mr. Srikant

Rao Founder and CEO of Affordable Business

Solutions Spoke on the topics “Project Leadership

and Art of Managing

Relationships & Value at

Bottom of The Pyramid

– An entrepreneurial

Journey” respectively.

Murali Santhanam, PMP

Namita Gupta, PMP, PMI-ACP

Rama K, PMP, PMI-ACP

Shikha Vaidh, PMP, PMI-ACP

Soumen De, PMP

Vittal Vijayakumar, PMP

2 Page


Project Based Organization Culture -

Organizational Project Culture (OPC)Seshadri Chatterjee, PMP

Steps to create an ideal OPC:

•

•

•

•

Create a OPC Steering committee

Communicate OPC to the whole

organization

Measure the gap between

organization current culture (OCC)

and ideal OPC

Develop strategies to close the gap

between OCC and OPC.

Create an OPC Steering committee:

A cross-functional steering committee

that consists of a mix of management

and staff will lead the project, guiding the

approach for the organization. This

committee will report directly to their

Sponsor, the Management of the

organization. It will be important for the

Steering Committee to define their

purpose, roles and responsibilities as well

as their communication strategy and

expected outcomes. They will develop

sub-committees of staff who will help to

manage the on-going project change

requirements.

Communicate OPC to the whole

organization:

Once the Steering Committee has

undertaken the first step, they will

communicate the policy to the rest of the

organization explaining why it is

important and how it will benefit all.

Measure the gap between

organization current culture (OCC)

and ideal OPC:

For measuring the base point for the OCC

in relation to the OPC, staff of all levels

will be asked to complete a survey. These

individuals might spend a lot of time on

projects or very little time. They may be

a project leader or a project team

member. They may be working on a small

project on their own or be part of a very

large project. They might provide

resources to a project but not actually be

involved in any project directly. All these

individuals should be included to provide

a 360-degree feedback view of the

current organizational culture with regard

to project management. The survey will

identify the gaps and where they exist

and will also gauge the organization's

readiness for change. Analysis of the

results will help the organization to

identify the organizational forces likely to

drive or impede change and what

changes are necessary to close the gap

between OCC and OPC.

Develop strategies to close the gap

between OCC and OPC:

It's management's responsibility to

determine how to close the gap between

the OCC and OPC for their organization.

Which strategies they want to follow? And

these decisions have to be taken by the

top management after giving due

weightage and feedbacks from the

project key stakeholders.

The benefits of Organization Project

Culture (OPC) can be as follows:

Projects will be more aligned to

corporate strategies.

Business objectives can be met in a

more measurable way.

Projects can meet the customer

expectations.

Projects are implemented within the

budget ensuring no cost overrun.

Projects are on schedule with support

from organization.

Time to market can be improved.

A project team will have high

satisfaction lowering attrition among

the team members.

Benefits of having OPC:

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

The term organizational project culture or

OPC is a very new concept. In a more

fundamental way the organization culture

is made up of the attitudes, values,

beliefs and behaviors of its employees. It

reflects the demonstrated values and

principles of the workplace, permeating

everything an organization does.

Essentially, it can make or break your

organization.

The ideal organizational culture is one in

which projects are considered in strategic

planning and are implemented to support

an organization's corporate strategy and

corporate objectives. In this way, they

receive the necessary attention and

support of senior management and the

organization's resources to allow them to

succeed. The OPC is basically a method

by which the organization supports its

ongoing projects.

The basic objective for creating an OPC

is-

To understand their current

organizational culture and how it

could be improved.

To measure where they stand today

against the ideal organizational

project culture

To understand the goal and strategy

to close the gap (between OCC and

OPC)

To develop and implement the plan to

create an OPC.

Fundamentals of Organizational

Project Culture (OPC):

•

•

•

•

Project Based Organization Culture -

Organizational Project Culture (OPC)PM Article



Pre-Project Preparation

•

•

•

•

•

•

Estimate a rough budget required to

support logistics and food & beverage

purposes and get it approved and in

your account upfront. Later you can

settle the amount when the project

ends.

If there's any integration requirement

during project phase, you can ask

specific team(s) to share standard

connectivity details upfront and keep

the documents with you.

Since all projects start with

requirement clarification sessions,

plan for required number of sessions,

required participants/teams, duration

of sessions, etc. and you can map

with meeting room reservation with

that.

Study background of the client's

business & try to understand their

need of this new system.

Get a copy of RFP/RFI and Business

Case documents and study

thoroughly, especially on benefit &

measurement, terms & conditions,

agreed scope, high-level timeline, ROI

part etc.

If your project has dependency on

any other project(s), then

If the other project already started

then get that project plan, study

and get details of integration

points, key milestones and

understand them clearly and keep

required documents for your

reference.

If the other project hasn't started

•

•

already, talk to prospective PM and

align with your high-level plan,

key integration points and

milestones and share documents

for his/her reference

If it's any telecom related project, you

may want to request for some test

SIMs & handsets upfront.

If you have any configuration

management system, get a

designated space & get your folders

mapped to the server.

In addition, if your project has vendor(s)

involvement, you may want to check for

steps as well

Request admin to prepare visa

invitation letters.

Assign project meeting room OR table

for their sitting arrangement together.

Get temporary access cards.

Talk to IT support team for their

WLAN connectivity OR other VPN

connectivity as required.

Share any request forms (e.g. VPN

connectivity) with vendor up-front so

that they can fill, scan & share.

Ask vendors for their accommodation

arrangement, and suggest any place

nearby to your office premise, it will

save travel time.

If agreement is already in place,

study the agreement carefully for

penalty clauses, payment terms,

SOW, deliverables, SLA, after

implementation support, etc.

Since all projects start with

requirement clarification sessions, ask

vendor upfront on required number of

sessions, required participants/teams,

duration of sessions, etc. and send

meeting requests to participants well

ahead.

Ask vendor for their travel plan, this

will help you schedule critical

milestones.

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Everywhere we learn How to manage

projects, what are the steps to follow,

what are the Dos & DON'Ts, different

methodologies like PMP, Prince2, etc. but

how to prepare for a project before it

starts is something you learn only

through experience. Today, I thought of

sharing my experience on pre-project

preparation from how much I have learnt

so far. And since I manage IT & Telecom

projects my view will focus more on

similar aspects.

So to start with, in general below steps

can be considered before the project

actually starts.

Prepare Job Description of resources

you think you need for the project.

Later, while asking for resources, it

will save your time.

If the agreement with client is already

in place, go through that thoroughly

for critical clauses like payment

terms, payment modalities, major

milestones, SOW, compliance

requirement, penalty clauses, etc. You

will NOT have time during project to

go through it.

You will need to arrange for a good

amount of logistics such as,

Reserve meeting rooms for

upcoming meetings

If required, request admin for a

project table for the team to sit

together

Check for the requirement of

support laptop, projector,

transportation, etc. and talk to

admin upfront and share tentative

timeline upfront

•

•

•

•

•

•

Pre-Project Preparation PM Article

S.M. Parvej Islam, IT Project Manager, Telecom


Ask vendors for their

accommodation

arrangement, and suggest

any place nearby to your

office premise, it will save

travel time.

4 Page


Spotlight

Roughly how many hours per week or per month you spend on volunteering for

PMI activities?

10-12 hours per week.

What motivates you to volunteer for PMI?

Interest to dwell more in the domain and the passion associated with it, has made me

appreciate Project Management more and more with every passing day.

What have been the challenges for volunteering at the Chapter?

Juggling time between work and home priorities. I often try and make up during weekends.

PMI Volunteering, Professional Commitment, Personal Commitment - How do you

balance the three?

It's a mindset that needs to change. Everything else will fall in place.

Name any 1-2 best volunteering experience?

1) PMPC

2) PM Footprints

Tell us your hobbies, or things you are passionate about, other than volunteering

at PMI?

Spending time with family.

What will be your message for your fellow volunteers?

There's lot to learn. Volunteering is like a self development tool. Its interesting and

enjoyable.

What is your thought on preferred recognition for volunteering?

Personally I opine that this should be as per norms of the Chapter. Sometimes it may be ok

to publicly acknowledge contribution.

As an Investment Banking professional, Eswari has

worked in-depth on Securities Market products and wishes

to explore this domain to greater detail with special focus

to sub-ledger systems.

She has spent over 10 years working on projects pertaining to

telecommunications, HR, finance amongst others.

In her spare time, she enjoys volunteering at the PMI Bangalore Chapter.

Learning new aspects of product and project management is a passion. Her strengths lie in

risk and audit management which she aims to pursue further.Eswari Rao, PMP

A. PMaaS – Project

Management as a Service

offers a cost-effective means

of engaging outside expertise

in a service-level model to

achieve significant

improvements in an

organization's project

management effectiveness. It

is a very real alternative to

using recruitment agencies

and system integrators. IT

Project Management needs

skills in technical architecture,

requirements gathering, team

management, leadership,

administration, and

recruitment, to name but a

few. These skills are needed

in different proportions at

different times across the

duration of an IT project. It is

rare that one person can do

all of these roles equally well.

Therefore PMaaS works

significantly as a solution.

[Source - Internet]


Continuous Integration & ContinuousDelivery using Agile

Continuous Integration & ContinuousDelivery using Agile

- Ranan Bhattacharya

Continuous Integration & Continuous

Delivery practice recommended by the

Agile Software Development Methodology

which has been able to deal with some of

the traditional challenges of development

to help product teams optimize and create

streamlined iterative release management

process that is predictable to a large

extent.

As per my experience Mindset of Minimum

Viability and Right Size Rule facilitates the

process.

Mindset of Minimum Viability – In

Continuous Integration & Continuous

Delivery practice we develop a small but

fully functional feature-set rather than

sweat over an ambitious list of features

that inevitably results in partially functional

and often a buggy release. The key is to

change the mindset of the team. Every

team member needs to understand that

the customer needs a set of completely

working features rather than a big list of

partially functioning ones.

Right Size Rule – "You aren't gonna

need it" (acronym: YAGNI) principle helps

make the change. During product

development the team should question and

challenge the premise of the release so

that we arrive at the 'right size' of the

release that meets the customer's

expectations of the product.

Product watchers have found the typical

user communities use only a part of a

product's feature set. For instance, survey

statistics indicate that 90% of MS Word's

user community uses 10% of this

functionality. Hence it is very important to

develop the right set of functionality and

release to the customer when they need it.

The benefits of this approach are multifold.

• Faster go-to-market

• Smart Product Backlog Management

• Real time response to customer issues

• Customer Delight

What are the benefits?

• Investing in the right areas

• Minimal risk of failure

The Continuous Integration and Delivery

model helps mitigate the risk that comes

with the question “Are we building the

right product?” to a large extent. Since

this methodology is inherently nimble it

enables immediate course correction in

terms of ensuring the right features are

released to customers.

Image – Phases of Agile Development, explains

how proper staging of coding, building, testing

and deployment makes the whole release cycle

more predictable.

Continuous Integration – across sites

and time zones

Continuous Integration is the process of

applying Quality Control along with the

development of any software. The

essential requirement here, for the multi-

function teams – development, testing

and documentation, is that the features

Core Principles of the Practice

are continuously built, tested and

integrated. This process also supports

teams working in multiple geographical

locations and across time zones to

effectively collaborate and delivery fully

functional releases.

• Test as you develop the product

• Automate the Build process

• Build the product on every code commit

• Automating regression testing

Simulate a production-like environment for

daily testing

The key is to continuously integrate

development and testing activities in a

manner that enables software to get tested

incrementally along with the development

so that the issues get detected and fixed at

the earliest.

Continuous Delivery is the technique to

allow the software to be packaged and

released in regular interval without much

manual intervention. The essential

requirement here is to deliver to the

customer who is “remote” in relation to

development teams.

• Delivery Pipeline

• Automated Continuous Deployment

• Automated Acceptance Test

Continuous Delivery – to the remote

customer


PM Article

Image explains the process flow – Incremental development & testing. Testing should

immediately followed by testing at every step. Test-driven development can be an

option where a developer creates automated unit tests that define code requirements

then immediately writes the code to pass the test case.

6 Page


Soumen De, PMP

Soumen De, PMP was invited to present a Keynote lecture at the Predictive Analytic

World (Manufacturing) Conference held at Chicago from Jun17-18.

The topic of the talk was "Mining Big Data for Improving Launch Quality and Customer

Satisfaction" related to automotive industry.

In his talk he presented how the customer (one of the main stakeholders for an

automotive company) expectations are often very different across region and what are

the challenges involved in delivering the 'best' quality for each specific market. With

vehicle features and technologies becoming more standard, how OEM's must

differentiate themselves by improving launch quality performance and understanding

their customer's needs clearly. This session also examined how the automotive big data

analytics can enable competitive advantage by improving launch quality and customer

satisfaction. Conference details are available at

[http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/mfg/2014/agenda_overview.php]

PM Accomplishments

Some Experiences during TrainingSome Experiences during TrainingChakravarthy Rajagopalan

person as well as what works in training

and what does not.

One batch which sat through a 3 month

induction program had already got jobs in

another company. They had probably

used our training period as a platform to

hunt for jobs elsewhere, and got the best

of both worlds (assuming that our world

wasn't as good as the other).

During one session of induction training,

since the trainees knew that their jobs

were assured and that much of the

content of the induction program was

academic they took it lightly and had to

be disciplined like college students.

People only take training seriously if

there are strings attached. There is

usually one individual in a class who

influences the team when they are

offline. Identifying this individual and his

attitude can be critical to the way the

fresher team shapes up. If this 'ring

leader' is creating a negative

attitude about the training, and

the company, the rest of the

group may succumb to peer

pressure.

We understand the

shortcomings of the interview

process when we see the hired

hands during induction training.

It is so difficult to understand a

human being in 30 minutes of

technical interview. But we see

all the questions that we did not

ask during the 30 days of interaction with

the inductees. The quiet but well behaved

one, the quiet but radical one, the

intelligent but wild one, the “I-me-mine”

one, the “will I get a C++ project soon”

one.

Well I am sure people who tried to induct

me felt as frustrated or elated at me and

my peers once upon a time. What goes

round comes around.

As a Software professional I have tried to

conduct induction training sessions.

These are some of the interesting

experiences that I had.

Once I was walking a batch of fresh

engineers through a software life cycle.

One of the tasks was to develop

an online test application.

Halfway through the

development of the application,

one engineer came to me and

said 'Sir, if we complete this

application, we will feel very

complacent and proud. Let us

leave it unfinished'. I suppose

this could be classified as

'negative thinking'. Some people

who lack confidence probably

shoot themselves in the foot to

keep their motivation alive.

As part of the induction program we

encouraged the team to make 'Proof-of-

concepts' for projects that we were

bidding. This meant doing things which

were unconventional and creative. At the

end of the training the same engineer

who wanted to leave the application

incomplete found the POC projects to be

fun and educational. I guess there are

more conclusions we can draw about that

PM Article


The function concluded with distributions of mementoes to all Footprints

speakers and also the Star Awards to the PMP Quest Faculty.

The Chapter held a Special General thBody meeting of the members on 13 September 2014 at Hotel Woodlands,

Bangalore. The Special meeting discussed and adopted a number of

Amendments to the Chapter By laws. A

large number of Chapter members

participated in the meeting.

This Meeting was

followed by the Annual members meeting

of the chapter where in the yearly balance

sheet and a report on the various activities

of the Chapter was presented.

th On 19 September 2014, The

annual PM Primer event was held at

NIMHANS Convention Centre. Nearly 460

students from 23 Engineering and B schools

participated in the One day conference.

During the conference the students were

introduced to the subject of Project

Management.

th On 27 September a one day work shop on

Agile practices was held at hotel Royal Orchid. An two day advanced program th thon agile practices is being held on 11 and 12 October at hotel Royal Orchid.

This program would enable the participants to take on the Agile certification

test.

Special General Body Members Meet:

Annual Members Meet:

PM Primer:

Agile Foundation Program:

Chapter News ... continued from Page 1Continuous Integration

... continued from Page 5

Project Based ... continued from Page 2

Pre Project Preparation ... continued from Page 3

In today's world customers are not prepared

to wait for long time-frames to receive

features and then find out that the product is

only partially meeting their needs. This has

intensified the challenge for software

development organizations to find ways to

deliver periodic releases as and when the

customers want.

We believe Continuous Integration &

Continuous Delivery practice is gaining more

acceptance in the industry because of its

capacity to enable teams to deliver solutions

of the value, in considerably shorter

timeframes.

Industry studies report that the organizations

take to Agile Methodologies very well in the

engineering phase but almost always follow a

more traditional release plan of doing a few

fixed releases a year. Here again, Continuous

Integration & Continuous Delivery can help

release well tested list of features in a small

bit sized chunks that lead to greater adoption

by customers. There are industry figures that

indicate upward of 80% improvement in

testing and release effectiveness when this

methodology was deployed.

The approach being very much customer

centric ensures that the customer is co-opted

into the development process, and results in

an inherent commitment on the part of the

customer to adopt the product and use it. This

leads to a win-win relationship both for the

customer as well as the vendor developing the

software.

•

•

•

Project team will have greater confidence

towards the corporate team.

Strategically more beneficial and

sustainable for any future projects.

Mutually beneficial for both the project

teams and the corporate team.

By having an OPC, projects tend to be more

successful (in terms of schedule, budget etc.)

also there will be better employee satisfaction

lowering attrition. Customer satisfaction index

would increase there by increasing competitive

advantage in the market. Also it will contribute

to the overall success of the corporate

strategy.

Conclusion:

•

•

•

•

•

•

Get an idea on other deployments of your vendor, if possible you may talk

to 1/2 person from those organizations to have an idea on their system

performance, listened to their implementation expertise and post-

implementation support. Someone must have done all these background

checks before, but you will see, having an understanding will help you

during project execution.

If you are having foreign vendors, get an understanding on their culture &

etiquette, time zone difference, food habit, national holidays, weekends &

working hours.

Get communications and escalation matrix.

If possible, collect phone numbers of critical resources.

If it's any of-the-shelf product, get understanding on the system's standard

features.

You may suggest your vendor on preferred mobile operator in your country

which has good reception in your office.

Mentioned steps are only a handful of steps I can think of, there are many

more nitty-gritties you need to take care of, but having a small checklist of

your own hopefully.

8 Page


PMI Bangalore India Chapter# 13, Suryastan Apartments, Andree Road, Shanthi Nagar,Bangalore - 560 027, Karnataka, India

[email protected] +91 80 6583 3671, +91 80 2211 5772, +91 98868 14078http://www.pmibangalorechapter.org

ValueWorks; [email protected]

PM Essence

Disclaimer

“The mission of PM Essence is to facilitate the exchange of information among professionals in the field of

project and program management, provide them with practical tools and techniques, and serve as a

forum for discussion of emerging trends and issues in project management. PM Essence is YOUR

Newsletter and Bangalore Chapter welcomes story ideas and/or suggestions to make it still better. More

information can be found on the Chapter's website.”

All articles in PM Essence are the views of the authors and not necessarily those of PMI or PMI Bangalore

India Chapter. Unless otherwise specified, it is assumed that the senders have done due diligence in

getting necessary copyright and official clearance in respect of all letters and articles sent to PM Essence

for publication. PMI Bangalore India Chapter is not responsible for loss, damage, or any other injury to

unsolicited manuscripts or other material.

The Lighter Side of PM

We like to hear

what you think!!

Please complete the sentence below

with your thoughts in 10-15 words and

send them to

The best entry will win attractive

goodies from PMI Bangalore India

Chapter.

This edition's slogan

Please provide your response by

th29 October 2014

Chapter will select the best slogan and

felicitate the winner during a Chapter

event.

[email protected]

“It is advisable to apply Risk

Management processes in a

project because

......................................... ”

In our last edition, we had asked you to

express your thoughts in 10-15 words to

continue the following sentence

and the best response is . . .

and the Winner is

It is essential for any PM to

manage stakeholders expectation

as/because ....................................

as it helps PM deal with unresolved

issues, manage disagreements and

maximize stakeholder synergy in a

project

Vedamurthy

Mallikarjunaswamy, PMP

PMI Bangalore Chapter announces PMPC 2014 from th nd20 -22 November at Nimhans Convention Centre,

Bangalore.

This year's theme is "Architecting Project

Management for transforming lives". Please mark

your calendar and stay tuned for further announcements

from the Chapter.

Article Contribution

This monthly newsletter is a forum where everyone can contribute through articles on

Project Management and related topics. You can also claim PDUs for your contribution

under category D (Creating new project management knowledge). Additionally it

helps you in improving your writing skills. Use this opportunity and excel in the field of

Project Management.

You can send your Articles or route your queries to

Please note that you do not need to be a PMI or Chapter member to contribute articles

for Essence and participate in monthly slogan competition. All are welcome.

[email protected]

pmi newsletter oct 2014 - pmi bangalore chapter€¦ · the highlight of the event were keynote...

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