RAID based approach for efficient Project Management in apragmatic way towards outstanding Project delivery.

6th Annual Conference on Project Management Leadership

Authors

Phanindra Kishore DBV Email:phanindrakishore.s@avacorp.biz

AVACorp Technologies Pvt. Ltd

East West Center, 3rd & 4th Floor,#128, Nelson Manickam Road,

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Aminjikarai,Chennai - 600 029

Phone: +91-44-23741122

Abstract:

Now a day’s delivering projects within the planned budget, timeline and

expected quality levels is very critical to projects success. To attain

this, project managers need to focus on different aspects of planning

considering the technology constrains and the niche demands of high

transforming needs of end customers. Though we follow different life cycle

based approaches from inception to transition (in terms of project

management terminology from initiation to closure), proper risk based

project management assessment at each stage of project life cycle will help

in streamlining the delivery. Ultimately project managers can overcome

issues related to budget overruns, schedule overruns at the same time they

can meet the set quality standards.

Forrester suggest in one of their reports as “Strong project managers view

risk management as an important tool that enables them to see the road

ahead and remove molehills before they become mountains”. Here in this

paper it deals with the pragmatic ways of assessing risks, assumptions,

issues and dependencies in each phase of project management or project life

cycle from requirements to planning, execution, monitoring and control,

metrics analysis with proper corrective actions and action items.

This strategic approach is generic and scalable to any type of project

engagements. Using this approach from down to higher management

predictability in terms of projects health in terms of delivery, timeline,

cost, change and scope can be controlled in an efficient manner.

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Introduction:

The current scenario in the industry with the transforming needs of high

end business solutions and demanding customer expectations require proper

tracking and efficient project management process. Considering the planning

aspects of project, to cater the current industry demands project managers

equally need to give importance to RAID’s i.e. focus should be given to

identification, tracking and managing the risks, assumptions, issues and

dependencies. Most of the projects fail to deliver with expected quality by

meeting the cost considerations because mainly project managers concentrate

on art part of project management aspects by delegating the planning

aspects, technical aspects of project items to other stake holders.

Ultimately all these management faults will lead to increase in

dependencies and then finally lead to risk in handling the project

delivery.

There is a paradigm shift in the management of projects as many of the

firms, especially in the Information systems and new product development

firms, move from just managing the projects to risk based project

management style. This shift is bringing constructive change to the way

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that projects are selected, how they are managed, and how the firms are

organized to bring direction, structure, and oversight to the processes.

This risk based project management style (RAID based model) had helped the

firms to build portfolios of the most beneficial projects, increasing

value, reducing resource demand, and assuring alignment with strategies.

The new processes are enhanced by the availability of specialized computer-

based systems that have been designed and optimized to address the issues

of project selection and portfolio maintenance, and to communicate

effectively with the Project Management Office (PMO), corporate executives,

and other stakeholders, leading to vastly improved governance with proper

risk treatment methods.

Also now a day’s every customer expects delivery in agile form i.e. quick

requirements, design, coding, testing and implementations with faster

delivery. But on the other side of age old situation even now “Too many

organizations are attempting to adopt new technologies while retaining older ways of doing

things”. In the case of PPM, we see organizations attempting to expand their

project lifecycle to embrace the “idea-to-benefit” with the manta of

RAID’s. They are adopting structured methods to remove politics from

project selection and to build portfolios that contain projects that are

fully aligned with strategies, maximize benefits and ROI, consider and

contain risk, and make the most efficient use of limited resources. They

are improving methods, efficiencies and communications regarding the

execution of projects within the portfolios with proper risk assessment.

The following paragraphs in this white paper deals with the strategic ways

to adopt the risk based management style from project initiation to project

closure covering the project life cycle approach from inception to

implementation and support. Also it vastly reduces the potential for

project failure by placing greater discipline.

With this approach traditional way of managing triple constraint i.e.

scope, cost and time can be managed effective way by knowing the projects

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health at proper intervals of project life cycle by means of effective

tracking of risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies. Also meaningful

metrics analysis in line with the RAID process will help projects delivery

to success.

If you truly believe (as I do) that building a capability of managing

RAID’s in entire project duration will have a big pay-off for your

business, then investing in software that will help you to build that

capability is easy to justify. Updating your system of tools, with a robust

IPM engine with risk enablement at the core of a full-featured, integrated

system, in support of enhanced PPM practices, enthusiastically embraced and

promoted by an enlightened executive, is the ticket to success.

Before we go detail into the process first we will focus on gaining some insights about our RAID terminology:

RISK: An event that could cause loss or threaten the success (cost,

schedule, technical, quality of the software products and Project team

morale) of project.

A general definition of project risk is “an uncertainty that can have a

negative effect on meeting project objectives “

Assumption: An Assumption is a decision made with an element of

uncertainty.

Issue: An Issue is a situation which is currently impacting the project.

Dependency: A Dependency is a planned situation or event which cannot take

place before a prior situation or event has been completed

Below is the RAID life cycle diagram which depicts the conversion of each

attribute to Issue if we do not track them in a proper way.

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The Assumptions or dependencies arrived at the time of project planning and

different phases of project execution will convert to risk and issues in

the course of project execution. All these four attributes may interchange

their position if a project manager doesn’t track them properly.

Risk based assessment model in line with our project management disciplines and project life cycle:

Here now we will discuss the pragmatic ways of handling the risks, issues,

assumptions and dependencies in project life cycle along with the project

management process areas.

Below is the model alignment diagram with RAID process.

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1. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Discover Phase and

Project Initiation process area:

During the presales time and project initiation phase project

managers need to identify, capture and asses the dependencies to

execute the project in terms of its technical complexity,

environmental factors, resource loading factors, Training

considerations. Based on these factors planning and estimations based

on the scope need to be provided, hence the maximum risk in executing

the project will be covered in initial phases itself.

Also it is very important to tailor the process and identify the

relevant goals based on the project type. At the same time gathering

the past history of similar engagements wrt risks, estimations will

provide more insight and eliminates the risk.

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Proper requirement management at this phase is very helpful for other

project phases, base lining the scope and maintaining the bi

directional traceability with risk assessment approach will ease the

requirement management process. Metrics related to requirements will

ensure the health of the project.

Early identification and involvement of relevant stake holders will

save time and can eliminate major risks in project execution.

Hence identifying the relevant RAID’s in project discover phase will

give more clarity in terms of managing the projects triple constraint

i.e. scope, cost and time.

2. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Define Phase and

Project Planning process area:

During this phase project managers need to involve in all the

planning aspects of project right from identifying the resources,

loading and capacity planning, communication plan, identifying and

defining the project charter, requirements management plan,

acceptance plan etc.

Also project related goals like metrics, tailoring the process needs

based on project type and kick off meetings need to be planned for

project initiation.

Hence as part of this RAID attributes relevant to those project

phases need to be captured and tracked to manage the project to the

right direction. These are all can tracked through and internal IPM

tool for better results.

3. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Design Phase and

Project execution process area:

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During this phase project manager need to define a proper engineering

rigour to meet the entry and exit criteria for each of design

considerations right from designing the DB, Application, data flows

and defining the architecture and defining, designing the QC strategy

to meet the quality expectations. Also at this phase project manager

need to identify the tools and techniques need to be used along with

the technical team to cater the needs of future project execution.

Proper control and checks need to be established wrt IP violations

and maintaining the IP registers etc with proper RAID tracking

process. Risks related to these processes need to be assessed and

tracked to closure for better project delivery.

Also ensuring the quality gates with proper unit testing, code

reviews will ensure the build stability. Risks related to these need

to be tracked and closed along with action items in IPM.

4. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Development Phase

and Project monitoring and control process area:

This is the crucial phase of project delivery; here in this phase

handling risks and managing the other attributes are very important

for any projects success. Hence project managers need to be more

focussed on ensuring the build management, ensuring the proper

reviews and change tracking. Also change requests management with

proper impact analysis with risk treatment mechanisms will help in

efficient project delivery.

Also during this phase to avoid the risks and sudden surprises in

delivery slippage, adhering to schedules, cost overruns etc. Project

Managers need to focus on phase end audits, which will help in

knowing the project health in a predictable way also maintaining the

project health profile along with meaningful metrics will eliminate

risks in delay in delivery.

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Tracking the RIAD’s along with the proper action items to closure

will ensure meeting the timelines.

5. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Deployment Phase and

Project Closure process area:

During this phase project managers need to give utmost importance to

meeting the quality objectives by risk tracking the deliverables

related to UAT, acceptance criteria, client expectations and Non

functional requirements.

Also project managers need to assess the lessons learnt, best

practices followed along with the facts of what went wrong and what

went well. This will help in mitigating the risks in managing the

similar projects in future.

Project Closure need to be prepared by focusing on closing the open

risks, so that issues will be tracked to closure.

By appropriately following the above said five strategic thumb rules

along with proper RAID assessment, any type of project portfolios

definitely is able to deliver with greater quality by meeting the

customer expectations and budget considerations with greater ROI,

which is the success path to repeat business and new client wins to

the organizations.

RAID as a bridge to PM and Project Life cycle:

Now a day’s in the fast paced delivery models like agile and scrum

processes the expectations from all aspects of project criteria wrt

quality, development methodology and delivery is very high. To meet this

niche demanding needs of customers RAID assessment approach acts as bridge

in eliminating the risks in operations and project portfolio management.

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Below is the sample example for the above listed facts:

From the above we can conclude that by means of effective usage of RAID

model, projects can be controlled and mitigated both from operations to

project portfolio management and vice versa. The ultimate goal of the

project success is to gain margins which is a visible factor through what

if analysis or cost margin analysis.

Schedule, timeline slippages are managed through proper tracking of effort

variance and schedule variance; these can be compared against operations

goals defined at initial stages of project.

Risk identification, assessment process:

To meet the objectives and pragmatic ways defined above each project

manager must the know the techniques of identifying the risks then only the

next process levels of defining the risk strategy, risk assessment, risk

mitigation (Contingency), risk reporting can be done effectively.

Generally the risk identification techniques are from the kick off

meetings, team meetings, past Organization risk registers, project symptoms

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which are likely to damage the assets or deviate timelines etc are of

sample indicators. One most important view point is most of the project

teams had false impression that only leads and project managers can raise

and identify risks, which is false myth. Every project stake holder has

right to raise or identify a risk.

Once the identification process is over project managers need to come up

with the categorizing the risks based on the impact and probability of

occurrence, from this risk exposure index can be calculated. In general

risks of REI greater than or equal to 12 need to be escalated and discussed

in account calls or delivery review calls.

As this is most general methodology in general most of the project

managers know, just provided high level view points for risk identification

and assessment.

Best practices need to be followed for effective project delivery with RAID model:

Below are some of the best practices which will help in smooth project

delivery:

Listing and identifying the risks, assumptions, issues and

dependencies related to scope management, estimations and planning.

Managing and identifying the resource level dependencies at the

initial phases of engagement will help in better capacity planning,

thus buffer management is nil.

Identify, tailor and define the objectives and goals in the process

at the beginning of the project, hence tracking of the relevant

project artifacts will not become over head to the project manager.

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Track, assess, manage and close the RAID through an IPM tool with

proper analysis and corrective actions which will help in identifying

the root cause of the problem, thus precious project time will be

saved in doing the impact analysis later.

Timely audits, health checks, quality gates, IP compliance registers

will make risk free in paying penalties to the customers.

Ensuring the checklists for reusability and frameworks based models

will save time, this need to be planned initially itself to save the

project time.

Capturing the meaningful metrics and its analysis will help in

predicting the project health through which major risks in slippages

of timeline, quality, on time delivery and high customer satisfaction

can be achieve d. Hence project managers are alerted to manage the

risks at earlier.

Conclusion:

As Forrester suggests in one of their reports as “Strong project managers

view risk management as an important tool that enables them to see the road

ahead and remove molehills before they become mountains”. Hence RAID based

project management approach will ensure on time project delivery by meeting

the customer expectations and projects can be delivered within the budget

considerations.

The pragmatic approach defined in above white paper will ease project

managers, account managers and program managers manage their project

portfolios effectively by eliminating the risks involved in executing the

all project engagements. As this is simple, easy and effective industry

standard approach, using which projects of all categories can be rolled out

easily and can see the results of success in shorter span of time.

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