dinsdag 20 september 2011

Top 10 project failures - The 2010 Survey Results

1. Changes to Project Scope (Scope Creep) [Third year in a row!]
2. Resources are Inadequate (Excluding Funding)
3. Insufficient Time to Complete the Project
4. Critical Requirements are Unspecified or Missing [Up four from last year!]
5. Inadequate Project Testing
6. Critical Project Tasks are Delivered Late
7. Key Team Members Lack Adequate Authority
8. The Project Sponsor is Unavailable to Approve Strategic Decisions
9. Insufficient Project Funding [Down two from last year!]
10. Key Team Members Lack Critical Skills

3 out of 10 main issues are P-CMM related

vrijdag 16 september 2011

Implementing Agile with the People-CMM

More and more organizations are adopting Agile ways of working. The descriptions of Agile methodologies give much guidance on how to manage on a team level. But there is limited information on changes needed at higher level in the organizations. Also, Agile assumes that an organization has a professional workforce, which is managed and supported in such a way that it is able to do its work effectively. But there is only limited information in today’s agile methods on how to develop and manage this workforce.

The People Capability Maturity Model ® (P-CMM) helps organizations to establish and improve their workforce, and assure that the right conditions are established for teams to excel their performance. This posting describes how to deploy the P-CMM to support Agile. It gives a roadmap of P-CMM process areas that an organization can implement as a start, to reap quick business benefits. The process areas do not replace Agile methods; they are used additional to the Agile methods to support their implementation. A more detailed description of the People-CMM roadmap for Agile can be found in an article published in Software Quality Professional.

Some of the problems that organizations that implement Agile experience are

■Communication difficulties between new Agile teams and the existing line organization
■Problems in fulfilling the higher work environment demands from Agile teams
■Difficulties establishing ways to reward and support team culture, behaviour and results
■Assuring the availability of the right competencies and skills, in time when teams need it
■They have to find new ways to share and re-use knowledge and experience across teams
■Existing management styles that conflict with the agile principles



The core of the roadmap consists of 3 process areas, Staffing, Communication and Coordination and Participatory Culture. Staffing assures the availability of teams of professionals, Communication and Coordination assures that they have the right information, and are able to collaborate effectively and Participatory Culture empowers teams and enables them to take effective decisions. The practices in these 3 process areas support each other and therefore should be aligned as much as possible. They are the base for 3 other process areas. Compensation rewards the teams for their contribution towards the company results, where Work Environment provides them with the means needed to work efficiently and Competency Development enables them to continuously improve themselves to deliver value .

The People-CMM roadmap for Agile has been published is an article in Software Quality Professional. The article helps an organization to focus upon the critical people issues that need to be addressed when migrating to Agile. It also describes how the changes can be implemented in an Agile way, enabling a flexible organization that is able to continuously improve.

Author: Ben Linders