EM - Problems a project could face without proper project planning

Hi Guys,

Sorry for the fact that I haven't posted anything in a while. Been super busy with work and stuff. Hope to make these summaries more often. Took a few minutes to summarize an EM answer :

This answer summary is off the marking scheme of the March 2011 EM paper for question 7 (a) : 10 marks. The answer has been generalized and abstracted without the context of the case so that it can be replicated verbatim in similar questions having different cases.

Problems that a project could face without good project planning

<intro>

Project planning involves the following:

1. Clearly defining the objectives of the project
2. Setting realistic schedule, budget and resource estimates for the project
3. Feasibility study for the project
4. Defining the RnR of the project team
5. Defining the monitoring & control mechanism for the project

</intro>

<hint>Once the introduction is done it is up to the person answering to describe the possible outcomes (with impact) of not having the aforementioned 5 points</hint>

1. Not having clear objectives would allow for scope creep. The client will alter the specifications of the project since no clear objectives have been defined and signed off by the client. This would alter the scope of the project and thereby affect the timely and budgeted delivery of the project.
2. Not having clear objectives will cause confusion within the project team. Scope creep and frequently changing requirements would cause team members to become demotivated, decreasing productivity and hence affecting the overall progress of the project.
3. Unclear objectives hinder the implementation of strong change management control mechanisms.

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1. Without good planning a baseline budget, project schedule and resource allocation plan cannot be created. This would lead to the illogical sequencing of project tasks, inefficient utilization of resources, adverse budget variances and unrealistic estimations, all of which, in turn would result in project failure.
2. Without having a proper baseline budget, project schedule and resource allocation plan, the project manager would not be able to track/ monitor and control the project in terms of time and budget (No proper feed-back/forward mechanism). This would result in lags in delivery of artifacts, adverse buget variances and idle/burnout resources. The absence of a resource allocation plan would create communication issues and conflict within the group as a result of unclear RnRs of the project team.

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1. Not conducting a feasibility study would mean that the project is open to emergent risks. The project manager would be unaware of the potential risks and problems with regards to the project in order to come up with a contingency plan. The project would be reactive to risk and not proactive.
2. Not conducting a feasibility study would not allow the project manager be aware of the impact of the project on various stakeholders. If the project has an adverse impact on the stakeholder, and the stakeholder is powerful, this stakeholder can negatively affect the delivery of the project by hindering project activities.
3. Without a feasibility study, the project manager will not be able to assess the various effects of the project on the local environment, community and society at large. If the project is detrimental to either of the 3, then it must not be executed.

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1. The lack of defined RnRs for the project team would result in activities being duplicated or missed. Duplicated and missed activities compromise on the timely and quality delivery of the project respectively.
2. The project team will lack structure since the absence of an RnR matrix will mean that there will be no team member responsible per work package. This also would create poor communication channels within the team and towards stakeholders. This would mean that the team and stakeholders would not be on the same page at any given time, inevitably resulting in confusion within the project and compromised triple constraints.

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1. Without developing appropriate control systems for the project there is a strong possibility that the project will go overboard in terms of time and budget and under-deliver in terms of scope. Control systems enable the project manager to keep track of the triple constraints in relation to the initial baseline budget, project schedule and SLA and take preemptive action when an adverse variance is observed.

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<conclusion>Conclude the answer by saying that the aforementioned problems arise as a result of poor project planning practices.</conclusion>

<hint>The key learning in this question would be the 5 activities that are required in the planning stage of a project</hint>

Until next time....Happy studying folks !!!

Part 1: Millennial Thinking

Hi guys,

Recently we had a very interesting brainstorming session at our company, initiated by one of our exec. VPs. We were to form teams that brainstormed millennial solutions to business problems. This exercise was aimed at fostering millennial thinking within our company while brainstorming for innovative ideas.

Our team comprised of 3 people: Me, the millennial and two senior managers who were experts in the Insurance domain. Therefore we chose Insurance as our domain and ABC as our hypothetical client.

Millenial thinking, consists of a 2 points we need to look upon:

1. What do millenial customers want?

And by customers I mean the end customer and not our client. To put it in very simple terms, at the end of the day, what our client expects from an IT services company is a solution that is developed with properly managed triple constraints. We can complicate this to our heart's content but at the end of the day, our clients want is a solution within budget, conforming to requirements and quality standards that is delivered on time. This makes this triangle our Business As Usual (BAU). If we can't deliver on BAU, i.e.- the triple constraints, we won't have clients.

The question we need to ask is can we really satisfy our clients with mere BAU? If we equal client delight to our triangle we are putting ourselves in par with our competition. If we equal our client delight to triangle plus innovation, then we can truly achieve client delight. BAU is what the client requires and expects from us. Innovation should be what the client doesn't expect. It is the extra value addition that we give to our clients. We should go to our clients with innovative solutions that will put our client ahead of his/her competition. In order to do this is one should position oneself in places quoting our GM "where the puck will land" and go to clients with unique business solutions driven by technology as opposed to professing expertise in technology to solve business problems. What this will do is convert clients into partners, which would obviously provide a littany of benefits for the service provider.

So the question we need to ask here is how do we come about with this necessary innovation as an organization?. Will the method we came up with innovative solutions in the past hold water, today? The first step in millennial thinking is thinking of the end customer's satisfaction (relating to this case, the end customer of ABC is me. What do I want as a millenial? To do everything online. ZPI. Mobility. Zero Effort. Transformative Services, Market research assistance) as opposed to what our client wants. What the client wants is BAU. What the client's customer wants is to solve his/her problems via our client. What we should do is enable our clients with the ability to satisfy their millennial customers. We can do this via innovations born out of millennial thinking.

When thinking in terms of end customers it is important that we think of the end to end holistic journey of this end customer. Each use case should have a corresponding end customer journey. For each of these end customer journeys we can then brainstorm the various methods in which we can harness millennial technologies to come up with millenial solutions to our client's customer's pain points.

2. The second thing we need to consider in millenial thinking is how we can combine all the possible millenial technologies in order to come up with innovative solutions for our clients.

 In this example we combine emergent technologies such as big data, mobility, heuristics, cloud and social media to come up with 3 KVPs for ABC. The 3 KVPs being automated policy population, paperless-mobile policy administration and a transformative service for claims. A truly millennial solution will combine two or more millennial technologies in a single solution. The reason why we should look along the lines of millennial technologies is twofold:

1. Cost effectiveness
2. Relevance (for the time period)


The advantages of millennial thinking would be:

1. We will be able to ensure customer delight by providing them innovative millennial solutions.

2. We will place ourselves ahead of the technology curve, thereby providing us with ample business consulting opportunities and better billing. (able to bid for bigger clients because of our domain expertise)

3. Develop a rep as a company that caters to the requirements of millennial customers.

4. Forge partnerships with clients as opposed to being a vendor for clients.

5. Develop three silos of competencies that we can take to our clients: millenial technology expertise, millenial business consultancy and millenial innovation.

6. We will have with us at the end of the day, a culture that embraces disruptive innovation.



There were 2 takeaways we had at the end of this exercise:

1. The basic millenial thinking process:
a) Think in terms of work flows with the perspective of the client's end customer in mind.
b) Think of a combined millennial technology solution.

2. A method of fostering innovative thinking:

 Someone who knows technology + Someone who knows domain + someone who doesn't know anything = Innovative solutions.

Familiarity breeds contempt

I read a story, some time ago, about a camel. It said that, the first man who saw a camel, was frightened of the creature's large size and ran away. The second man, on hearing the story of the first man, observed the camel from a distance. The third man, on hearing the incredible account of the second man, ventured further and fed the camel some tufts of grass off the palm of his hand. The fourth man, on hearing the recounting of the experience of the third man, went even further by putting a saddle on the camel and riding it across the desert. The moral of the story was that "Familiarity breeds contempt." The more man got to know about the camel the less incredulous it became.

What this idiom essentially means is that, the more acquainted an individual becomes with an entity, the less s/he will tend to respect and like it. This is true of many things such as relationships, material possessions and jobs. The basis of this idiom is that, with time, as people become acquainted with something they tend to perceive dissimilarities/dissatisfaction in it. As with all habits, routine activities rely heavily on the subconscious and are taken for granted; hence the contempt displayed to monotonous activities. 

When looking for a prospective girl/boyfriend, we take superficial glances at our prospects, looking for attributes that meet our expectations or match to our own personal attributes. The window of time for this judgment to be made is relatively short, when one compares it to the time spent in a relationship. Once a relationship is underway, the more time a partner spends with the other, will provide him/her the luxury of time and the opportunity to observe his/her partner in a more objective manner. Evidently, this will result in the inadvertent observation of a few dissimilarities of traits or shortcomings in expectations. Once this disjoint is witnessed, many relationships head south. Some of the lucky ones who don't have their relationship meeting its end, witness their partner taking them for granted, find that the amount of effort and affection put forward by their partner steadily wane and observe the lackluster of what was once a passionate and fueled intimacy.

The same effect can be observed in people, in general. At my workplace for example, I have had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a girl, who at first glance seems very forthcoming, friendly, trustworthy and extremely intelligent. However in hindsight, it could be understood that she possesses not one of these traits. What appears to be appealing loses its appeal with time. Time tames everything. As we become acclimatized to certain things, they become commonplace. 

The day I got my first smart phone, I was psyched. One the first day I made sure, that whenever I kept it down on the desk I kept it face down, with the protective cover facing the table surface. A few weeks later, I wasn't paying attention to keeping the phone face down. A month later, I would be throwing my phone on my workstation, as soon as I got to work. We value things more when they are new. This initially perceived value depreciates over time.

In Sri Lanka, there is this little quip used by teenagers when checking out girls on the sidewalks called "Durata apple, langata papol"; translated to  "What looks like apple from afar, looks like papaya from near". The closer the person you hope to ogle comes to you, the more privy you are to his/her faults.

This idiom's veracity can be witnessed in day to day economics. The scarcer a product is in the market place, the higher the value/price and demand for it. People are willing to pay more for a product that has little to no substitutes. By this logic, the more abundant a product becomes in a market, the less demand it draws and hence its value drops. 

The old adage "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is actually a derivative of this idiom. What absence does is reduce familiarity, which in turn decreases the amount of contempt one shows for the article that is absent. 

The reason why I chose to write on this topic is because, quite recently, I had a firsthand experience that served as a testament to the accuracy of this little proverb. Though I cannot spell out the details of the incident (as the people in question might read the blog :) ) I can however, post the important lessons that I learned from said experience. You see, the nicer you are to your friends, the more liberties they will take when it comes to you, the more personal boundaries they will cross and more things they will take for granted. The more one settles into a group, the lesser the group's perception of the individual's value to the group, becomes. As time passes and people in a group begin to know one another, they will assume that it is ok to take something without asking for permission, say something and be sure that the person will not be offended or even assume the privilege of taking another person's decisions.

After a bit of quiet reflection, you would realize, these were not the friends you had at the start of your semester/employment. They have all changed. They are your good buddies. They are better friends. They have become better friends at the expense of some of your personal boundaries. This is almost impossible to avoid in any loving relationship.

In order to ensure that, people do not assume liberties, while still allowing one to mingle with the crowd, all what one needs to do is,

1.     Maintain safe distance - Ensure that a safe, professional distance is maintained amongst colleagues when fraternizing with them. This is being friendly to your fellows but also clearly articulating one's displeasure when a boundary is crossed. Formalities and bureaucracies should be met despite the strength of your relationship with the individual. All conversations though personal should remain polite.

2.     Abstain from targeting/relating - Whenever one socializes, it is inevitable that there will be jokes and opinions thrown around. The more negative comments/targeted jokes a person hears from an individual, the greater the propensity for him/her to assume liberties around you. It is best to keep one's negative opinions to oneself and refrain from joking about individual people.

I've observed these two behaviors in my mentor at work. Being the Head of HR for our company in Sri Lanka, it is required of him to be liked by his peers and subordinates. Everyone loves him but at the same time, no one dares to assume any liberties with him. This is because, eventhough he is very forthcoming, humble and honest in all transactions he maintains his safe professional distance from everyone. It is like a little bubble of professionalism that encapsulates him and protects him from his external environment whilst allowing him to interact with it satisfactorily. I've also observed that all his jokes are never aimed at a single individual. They are always generic and always intended at making everyone in the group laugh.  

By following these simple two steps one is able to improve familiarity without incurring the contempt of one's friends. Nevertheless the disclaimer still remains that the best friendships have been formed on years of familiarization and eons of contempt shown for one another.

Mind map - Groups (EM)

Hey guys,

It has been some time since I put up a new post. Found this really cool tool for creating mind maps online called bubbl. You can access it at https://bubbl.us/. I've created the mind map for groups, according to our syllabus. Please feel free to post your opinions in the comments section below.

So a guy broke into our place today......

I had come home after my EM lectures at Achievers. After a groveling 6 hour study session I came home completely famished and exhausted. My aunt and cousin sister had come over. I was goofing around in our garden after lunch. My aunt, sister and cousin were in my room watching the lame wedding/bridal show "Subasiri". Feeling tired after a long day, I decided I should take my siesta and went into my room for a nap. Thathi (dad) was happily sleeping on Ammi's (mom) bed. It was tea time, about 4 in the afternoon.

I soon nodded off. After the show was over, my aunt and cousin had decided that it was time to go home. Ammi was in her room stirring thathi up from his slumber. My aunt, cousin and sister were in the living room, when my sister saw a guy walking, towards our gate, in our garden. He had a white cap on, gray T shirt, check shorts and rubber slippers. He was about my sister's height, 5'5, wore a silver necklace and was of a very dark complexion. My sister, confused at first, though it was our neighbor who had come over to our place but she soon realized that the person in our own garden was a trespasser who was up to no good. Nangi (sis) initially choked, but managed to get the words "hora" (thief) out. This spurred my aunt who bellowed at the top of her lungs, waking thathi up and bringing our entire congregation (except me) into the living room.

The moment my sis and aunt began shouting, the perpetrator picked up his pace, and quoting my sis "placed one arm on our wall, stepped twice on the wall to leap over it onto the road." Even to now, my cousin and sister who witnessed this keep repeating how this guy executed this miraculous feat of athleticism. All this commotion roused me from my sleep. I heard Ammi shout"Kawda kawda !!!" (Who is it !!). Waking up, I realized that something was wrong. My aunt and sister were shouting "Horek horek !!! " I immediately sprung out of bed, grabbed my grandfather's baton, I keep behind my mirror (just for such occasions) and ran out of the room. All my family members were in the garden and the gate was open. Realizing what had happened, I ran out of the house in a dead sprint hoping to chase down, whoever who walked in uninvited to my home !!!

On coming out onto the main road, that stretches for about 100 meters, I saw no one in sight. Despite this, I kept running, my dad and neighbor at my tail. I ran all the way to the main road and looked around feverishly, but there was no one in sight. My sis had blurted the description of the perpetrator as soon as my dad and I had come out. Coming to the top of the road, I realized that there was no way that anyone could have run out of sight so quickly. I turned around and ran back home while thathi and my neighbor went to scour the vicinity. By this time, all my neighbors were out in the street, brandishing iron bars, machetes and staves.

They all came to our place, and observed footprints on the ground where the theif had jumped from the wall to our garden. There were skid marks on the ground when he took off for that epic leap off our garden wall. Just then my neighbor (this is someone else, my neighbor to the south) who lives in the tallest building in our lane opened her fiber glass windows and said she had seen the perpetrator. She was too scared to cry out and call us. She hissed what she had witnessed to the party that was gathered at my place. She had seen the very same guy, jumping out of a balcony in another lane, onto the roof of one of my neighbors and then to another finally coming to our garden wall, when he jumped into our garden and made for a leap out our garden wall.

Despite our frantic efforts to search for him, he did eventually evade us. Thathi and my neighbors, even went to the extent of going around Nugegoda (the city I live) in their motorcycles in hopes of finding the guy. After making entries at the Police Station, Thathi came home with a jeep of policemen. Apparently this dude, had been gallivanting around our lane on the pretext of picking flowers to go to temple. When he had observed a balcony accompanying a wall, he had kept his flower basket (which was later found by my hoodies) down and scaled a 7 foot wall to get into a balcony. He had pried open a cupboard and rifled through jewelry cases in a room where a girl was sleeping. Her waking up and catching him off guard had spooked him to jump out of the balcony onto my neighbors roof.

He had managed to escape, NOT by running down the road as I expected him to do (thus my futile sprint down my lane waving a baton over my head) but by climbing over another wall and jumping from wall to wall until he got away safely. Some parkour expert he must be !!! Nevertheless what surprised us was the tenacity and cool this guy displayed, even when he was discovered on someone else's property. I on the other hand, was shivering, partly out of fright and partly out of rage caused by adrenaline. But this guy, was such a cool customer, that he did not even turn to look in the direction of my aunt and sis when the yelled out. He only focused on making the leap, and keeping his face averted from witnessing eyes.

This guy should be one of the luckiest guys in the world. Had he jumped into my garden 10 minutes sooner, he would have been trapped between me and an angry father of a 21 year old girl. Had he slipped during his scaling of our wall, he would have surely broken his back.Had Thathi or I seen his face, we would have tracked him down from any crook and nanny of Nugegoda.

Everyone at home is terrified. I guess nangi and cuz should be terrified most of all. They had just finished watching Amityville Horror, when they saw a real life crook waltz his way over our garden wall. It was terrifying, yet exhilarating experience. After all I was wondering, when in the world I was going to use my baton on someone.

Summary : Tuckman's Model of Group Formation

Hi guys,

As you know, I'm doing CIMA. It is an awesome learning experience. The first thing I learned for EM is the Tuckman model of team formation. What I have done here is this; I have gone through the marking schemes (recent ones) for answers to questions on the Tuckman model of team formation and abstracted bits and pieces of information that are common to all answers. It's somewhat a list of things that MUST be there for an answer on the Tuckman model. As you guys already know, knowing the stuff is not enough - it is all about application. (So make sure you repeat the name of the company as many times you can in the answer :P:P:P)
I've italicized the words that are core to every answer.

Please feel free to download this and use it as study material for your exams. And please do shout out in the comments if I have missed anything important !!! Hope to do this for all major topics !!  Cheers !!!  :)

Tuckman's Model of Group Formation

Introduction

1. The Tuckman Model aims at improving, [the communication between team members] and [the understanding of project objectives by all team members] so that the team becomes effective in performing towards its objective 
2. The Tuckman Model ensures that effective teams are created by the linear progression across several team development stages

Forming Stage

1. Individual members come together to find out about each other's attitudes, abilities and backgrounds.
2. Objectives of the team are established
3. Roles of team members are established
4. Relationships between team members identified
5. Members discuss "how the group is going to work"

Storming Stage

1. Period of disagreement, argument and emotional dispute between team members. (Group cohesiveness is low)
2. Team members get to know each other better, by presenting views and approaches on how best to achieve team's objectives
3. Members may have different views and approaches that would result in conflict
4. Cultural conflicts emerge.
5. More realistic targets are set as a result of conflict and differences of opinion.

Norming Stage

1. Conflict resolution
2. Establishing guidelines, procedures and standards for behaviour in group 
3. Team members reach unanimous agreement on how the group is going to work via negotiation, compromise and areas of commonality
4. Norms of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour are set
5. Team cohesiveness increases
6. Team agrees on the standards of performance

Performing Stage

1. Team focuses on the achievement of the team objective, rather than on resolving conflicts
2. Team cohesion will be high
3. Team performance will be governed by the norms set in the previous stage

Adjourning Stage

1. Project comes to an end and team disbands
2. Lessons learned report is drafted

Other factors that affect Team performance/effectiveness

1. Ensuring team members have proper skills and attitude
2. Goal clarity
3. Role clarity
4. Leadership
5. Supervision of performance

References

The marking schemes of :

• May 2012 Question 6 (b)

• November 2011  Quesion 7 (b)

Counter1 = Counter2

Hey Guys,

Recently faced a small problem in my project. My team and I were coming with some code to verify if a person can be granted "confirmation". In our organization, every employee must complete a set of examination in order to be absorbed into the permanent cadre. Since our ERP is Oracle, we had to use PL/SQL to manipulated data to get results.

Having never used PL/SQL before, I was not privy to loops, arrays, cursors and structures. (to now I don't know if you can use these in PL/SQL). Severely handicapped with my lack of syntax, I sought to come up with a juvenile but functioning logic that would serve our purpose. As a wise man once told me: "Logic is logic, period !!!"  The requirement was simple:

There were a set of examinations that were considered requisite for an employee to complete in order for him/her to be granted confirmation. There were 12 such examinations. Some examinations were not relevant for some employees based on their chosen field and level in hierarchy in the organization. What we had to do was

1. Figure out what exams were relevant for the employee out of the 12 examinations
2. Find out if the employee had completed all the examinations identified in step 1

The logic that I came up was actually something I used for my FYP. Initially I declared 12 variables that would hold a 1 or a 0 depending on whether the examination was relevant. Next, I counted the number of variables that had a 1 assigned to them. For these variables assigned 1, I checked if the corresponding examination was complete. If it were complete and alternate counter was continually incremented. At the end, if the two counters matched apart for the exception of (0=0) , we can safely assume that the employee has completed all of the examinations requisite for confirmation.

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Let me demonstrate this logic with snippets for 6 examinations (as opposed to 12 examinations)

employee_number = 123

var_requisites_counter = 0;

var_requisites_completed_counter =0;

var_1 =0;

var_2 =1;

var_3 =0;

var_4 =0;

var_5 =1;

var_6 =0;

------  The employee 123 has to complete course 2 and 5 in order to be qualified for confirmation.

if (var_1=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_1='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

if (var_2=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_2='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

if (var_3=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_3='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

if (var_4=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_4='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

if (var_5=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_5='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

if (var_6=1) then

     var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_counter +1;

      if (course_6='Complete') then

           var_requisites_completed_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter +1;

      end if;

end if;

----- If the course is relevant our "requisites" counter is incremented. If the course is requisite and completed the "requisites completed" counter is incremented. 

if  var_requisites_counter = var_requisites_completed_counter and ( var_requisites_counter and var_requisites_completed_counter  > 0 ) then

      return 1;

else

      return 0;

end if;

------ With the exception for the 0=0 condition for the two counters, we compare the two counters. If they are equal the employee is granted confirmation. If not the employee is not granted confirmation.

Please comment on any improvements you can make this logic; I'm always eager for input. It's small, simple and juvenile, I know. But, it sure did get the job done. At EAG, (my department @ Virtusa) if it works, then that is all that matters. 

All in all it was nice getting my hands dirty with some coding, as opposed to doing monotonous management stuff. Déjà vu !!!