Thought process Transformation

They say..If you show a dollar coin to an IT and Business Person both will look at it differently...
Business person will say "I wonder what is today's exchange rate?" and the IT person will say...""hhhmmm, this coin is shaped more like Alpha character "O" (Letter Oh)  rather than numeric Zero"..(Not true...just made it up....but you get my point)....

IT developers and the business folks live and operate in 2 different worlds....unfortunately sometimes it is true...There should be steps taken by both sides to minimize this gap as much as possible...

Why?
A very basic necessity of working in today's world is to understand the business you are in and work towards supporting the business using your technology acumen and skills.
This is true, unless you work in a IT product based environment or somewhere else, where you may be working only to service your internal IT customers e.g. IT Infrastructure in a IT Company etc or you work alone on a marooned island manning a lighthouse switch.
Beyond that you have to work with the business.
This is required because Business is what drives Profits, Revenue and Sustainability to an Organization. Business has drivers like internal and external customers and partners, Competition, Compliance etc that decide and drive business and its exective decisions.

Coming from a Technology background, sometimes it becomes really difficult to think in terms of business, it is very easy to go back to the "Ones" and the "Zeros". During my initial IT Career days, being a consultant you have to wear the hat of an IT Developer cum Business Analyst, it becomes very difficult, to not think in terms of Tables and Columns and integrity data checks, rather in terms of Actors and Use cases, in front of the customer, who maybe as a Claims adjuster, is trying to explain how to send data to a glass vendor from the claim screen and wait for an amount estimate for damage repairs and then has to follow an escalation process so it gets approval if amount for repair was above the assigned claim adjuster's limit.
This really requires a major mindset change, a paradigm shift, if you may... wherein you get away from the developer mindset, where you in your own world do an efficient and scalable High level and low level designs and develop and unit test your own software to a Business person who tries to understand the people who run the business, their process and thinks of ways the technology can help them to make their work easier, better, faster and more efficient and smoother.

How?
The most important way to do this is, "to place yourself in the other person's shoes" and think the way he/she goes about the business day. This will help understand their painpoints and in turn help you to help them.
Certain steps that can be taken to overcome this chasm would be,
1> Get IT and Business aligned...In terms of Corporate Business goals and Objectives.

2> Companies to organize trainings, seminars for IT folk and business alike to make each side of the other side. For instance, hold workshops for business expaining them an IT lifecycle, what is a Functional document, high level designs, Integration, System Testing etc. Similarly for IT Folks, explain them the business processes and not just give them specs and expect the work to be done.

3> Have regular IT/Business meetings, maybe on a monthly/weekly basis where there will be general updates from both sides, Q&A to understand more and better

4> More involvement of IT Developers in Business meetings so they can understand the discussions and business painpoints and start thinking in terms of making those better.

Let me know your comments if you feel there are some points that can be added/modified to help you.

Technical Manager

What is a Technical Manager?
I often see Managers branded as a Technical Manager or a People Manager or a Coordinator or a Business Manager.So what exactly is a Technical Manager?.
A Technical Manager is usually a person who has worked in the Technical Domain and is a master of his skillset, knows his stuff like the back of his hand.
He is a well rounded individual with great Technical prowess as well as Management skills.
Focus of his Job profile includes Technical aspects of Project execution i.e. he acts as a liaison between the business teams and the development, QA and testing groups.
What would a Technical Manager do in a P&C Insurance Policy or Claims System implementation?
The Business Analysts have interacted with business and documented the requirements, now it is the job of the Technical Manager to understand and translate these requirements to proper design documents, Identify risks and mitigation strategies, Test plans, test cases and scenarios with the help of the requirements, development and Testing Teams. He is wholly responsible for the design, execution, control and monitoring phases of the project.
There is also the people aspect i.e. resource management, stakeholder management activities that require strong communication and soft skills. A Technical manager has to have these qualities to translate technical issues and topics to non technical stakeholders and get their buy-ins.
This point needs a mention here as Technical people are known to be less 'people friendly' and are more aligned towards a silo-work or are lone rangers as that, because that is how they must have worked during their pure hands on development days, the Technical Manager role requires you to be someone more than just a Technical expert.

Roles and Responsibilities
So at a very high level the roles and responsibilities of a Technical Manager include,
 - Help identify the correct standards, procedures, tools and techniques to be followed in a project so as to benchmark and track the project progress
 - Help identify the correct resource pool based on their strengths and weaknesses for requirements, development, testing and QA etc
 - Help identify the configuration and change management procedure and ensure adherence to the same.
 - Help in properly guiding teams in requirements, design, development and testing phases.
 - Help identify the risks and issues associated with a project and plans to mitigate or resolve them.
 - Plans for code reviews, testing plans and strategies as per the project standards set
 - Help in System, user, regression testing and post production support activities.
 - Lastly, monitor and control the project financials, so the projects stays ontime and within budget and within scope.

What makes an effective Technical Manager?
To be an effective Technical Manager
1> Strong Technical skills
Make sure you know what you are talking about. Be knowledgable about the Technical aspects of your project.
  - Your Team members will respect you either for your Authority (which will not last long if you do not have the command over your Technical skills) or they will respect you for your 'Skills and Technical' knowledge - make your choice
 
2> Good communicator
Like i said before, your Technical development and Tech guru background will only get you so far. To progress to the next level, go up the career chain, you MUST have this one skill. As a Manager you will have to interact with different folks. e.g.
Stakeholders like the policy underwriters, Claims Representative, Financial executives, operations personnel etc.
Project Teams - Requirements, development, Testing, Infrastructure etc
This communication skill is a definite must because
- Internal development Teams will need to communicate with them about the development topics, milestones, issues faced, propose and discuss resolutions etc
- Stakeholders - To communicate the project risks and status items. To negotiate and get buy-ins on project topics etc

3> Good TeamPlayer
A project is as successful as the Team. So first and foremost, the project Manager has to ensure he has selected an effective team. The team is on mark with their deliverables and development and testing schedules. In case of any issues - personal and professional, you will have to work with the team to iron the issues out. A Project Manager has to be a strong influencer for his Project Team, there has to be a level of trust and understanding between the two.
Technically make sure the team follow the project standards and guidelines. Ensure that there are sufficient rewards and recognition, reviews and appraisals occur throughout the project. Ensure that there are some morale boosting activities like Team building workshops, team gettogethers
All of this is not possible unless the project Team works together.

How to progress your career as a Technical Manager?
Some of you may have got to this position as a part of career growth path or some may have been taken this option as an alternative job path. Whatever the case may be, make sure you perform your job sincerely and effectively.
All of the above points, not only help you be successful in your project, but they will also help you be a better Project Manager in the long run....What do you think? Let me know your thoughts and comments.....

Project Manager as a Business Analyst

Project Manager and Business Analyst roles both require unique skillsets and are definitely unique specializations. The well balanced combination of the two is a key contributor towards any project success.
Sometimes there is a need for the same person to assume both the roles. When Project Managers assume the role of a Business Analyst (One of the reasons for this may be a small budget project), there are a lot of factors that come into play due to this.
In all these years working in the Insurance IT Industry, i have seen numerous Projects suffer when the role to person matching is not perfect.
Reasons:
As mentioned above some projects may or may not have the luxury of a separate role for a Business Analyst. This may be due to varying reasons based on,
1> Overall Project scope
2> Project Budget allocated
3> Available resource knowledge base
4> Most importantly, no clear understanding of the difference between these 2 roles by the stakeholders and sponsors

When the Project Manager assumes the role of a Business Analyst, there are some things he has to keep in mind to ensure success in the role. This BA role essentially fits quite snugly in the Project Manager's domain due to the fact that both the roles require managing client expectations and having clear and concise client interactions. One role is focused towards successfully gathering project business requirements (Business Analyst) and the other geared towards entire project success (Project Manager).

Common factors:
The skillsets that are common for both Project Management and Business analysis are,
1> First and foremost is Communication skills
2> Understanding the entire the project lifecycle
3> Strong Stakeholder Management skills

Specific skills:
Skillsets that are specific to the Business Analyst role are,
1> Strong business process background
2> Understanding of Business analysis as a work function wrt gathering, analyzing and documenting requirements
3> Understanding people management wrt Business Analysis
Certain things to be kept in mind by the project manager when assuming the role of a Business analyst.
Success Factors:
 1> Being completely aware of the business processes
    For the Project Manager to be successful as a Business Analyst, he has to understand the business overall, the business process flow, the business value chain. Without the knowledge of these process areas, the Project Manager will not be able to meet the expectations for the BA role.
    You usually acquire this knowledge by working for a number of years in the Industry.
    For example: In my case, being in the Insurance IT domain, interacting with Business people for over 12 years now, gives exposure to all areas of Insurance business processes like Policy, Billing and Claims etc.
    Along with this, having a Project Management exposure is a definite plus, as it gives you the overall 360 degree view of the entire project gamut and thus helps streamline your thinking process.
   
2> Complete awareness of the Stakeholders expectations from the project.
   Since both project Manager and BA role both deal with stakeholders, there is a big difference between the 2 roles. One role is more concerned with the overall Project success by meeting stakeholder expectations (PM role), whereas the other role (BA) is more concerned with the business process expectations that must be fulfilled on completion of the project.
   You have to be constantly interacting with the Stakeholders so that you understand their expectations, pain points etc
  
3> Ensure the Business SMEs and End Users are aligned and aware of the project goals and objectives, the high level executive direction outlined for the project.
   As mentioned above, since business stakeholders, Subject Matter Experts, End Users may be aware of a specific area of project objective (i.e. Project will help in enhancing and executing XYZ business process in a shorter time frame and efficient manner), but it helps them to be aware of overall project objectives (e.g. Project will help achieve XYZ functionality more efficiently based on the requirements gathered in next 2 weeks and developed over the next 6 weeks duration for a certain cost and resource outlined)
  
4> Project Business documentation expectations
   Project Manager may be aware of the overall Business Analyst Role expectations from the delivery perspective, he has to be able to create Functional requirements documents, Gap documents, Use cases, UI specifications etc documentation as the case may be.
  
5> Help Quality and Testing Team in their analysis and Q&A
   Business Analyst along with the business stakeholders also has to be cognizant of the other members playing specific roles attributing to project success e.g. Quality Analysis Team, Process Management Team, Testing and infrastructure Teams.
Also last but not the least, Business analysts have to be somewhat of a Techo functional experts meaning along with understanding the Business aspects of the project, they also have to understand the technical dependencies, implications, risks posed by certain requirements and thereby come up with possible solutions alternatives. Business analysts are essentially bridges between the End business users and development Teams. They understand and gather the business requirements and translate and transform them to Specifications, use cases and functional requirement documentations which will make it easy for the technical developers to follow and design and code accordingly. These documentation will then also be used by the Testing and Quality Team so they can base their Test Cases and Test scenarios off them.

So in essence, Project Manager is more concerned or related to the big picture and the totality to complete the project, while a Business Analyst is more closer to the requirement understanding, gathering and documenting tasks.  Both the roles have certain commonalities and some differences, but it certainly helps in the project success, if the 2 roles have a good background of the other role and its expectations.
If the same person fill in for both the roles, the necessary and required skillset to guarantee the project success would be balanced combination of Project Management, Business knowledge, Technical background of the development platform used etc.

Earned Value Analysis

What is Earned Value analysis?
Understanding EVA (Earned value Analysis) is very important for Project success. Earned Value Metrics provide a common set of parameters and benchmarks against which a project progress can be mapped. This is mostly used during the Control and execution phase of the project. The metrics help indicate whether the project is on track or not.

Earned Value Metrics is a set of indicators that help in tracking and measuring certain parameters against a certain baseline which would help us in defining or visualizing whether a project is successful or not.

Advantages:
Along with this, other advantages of using Earned Value Analysis in project management are,
- Accurate  reporting of project logistics to PMO and project sponsors
- Early warning to Project Managers so they can take corrective actions by performing risk analysis, if a project starts going over budget or behind schedule

The 2 key elements that guide or help to trend a project are,
- Project Cost
- Project schedule
In order to calculate earned value on any project large or small, first the Project Manager has to define the WBS (Work breakdown structure), define the smallest level of activity schedule and cost and this forms the Project baseline (or planned value) against the project actuals (or AV) can be compared to calculate the earned value variances and indices.

Terminology:
Certain acronyms that will help us in understanding EVM are
PV = Planned Value = The Budgeted amount allocated for a certain scheduled work activity until the current point in time =Also known as Budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS)
e.g. For a web based project (say), we need to create a screen
This requires (say) 1 resource for 40 hours (@ $100/Hr), so the PV for this task is $4000 (for 40 hours of work)

AC = Actual Cost = Total Cost for the work that was performed=Also known as Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP)
e.g: In the above example assume it took 1 res 10 hours to complete 30% of the work
AC=10*100=$1000

BAC = Budget at completion i.e. Originally budgeted amount for the project i.e baseline cost
e.g. In the above case assume baseline cost is $4000

So based on this, we can track the project performance as follows,
EV = Earned value = BAC*Percent of Project completed=This indicates How much of budget should have been spent for the amount of work done so far.
e.g. EV=4000*0.3=1200

Cost variance = CV = EV - AC = This helps to determine project performance wrt cost/budget
e.g. CV=1200 - 1000 = 200 (NOTE: Positive variance is better than negative)

Schedule variance = SV = EV - PV=This helps to determine the project performance wrt schedule
e.g. SV=1200-4000=-2800 (NOTE: Positive variance is better than negative)

Cost Peformance Index = CPI = EV/AC= This index helps to understand how $ spent performs wrt planned cost
e.g.CPI = 1200/1000=1.2  (NOTE: Index closer to 1 indicates we are closer to baseline)

Schedule performance Index = SPI = EV/PV = This index helps us understand whether we are ahead or behind schedule
e.g. SPI=1200/4000=0.3 (NOTE: Index closer to 1 indicates we are closer to baseline)

Estimate at completion = EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) = Indicates what should be the final cost at any point in the project
e.g. EAC = 1000 + (4000 - 1200) = 3800

Estimate to Complete = ETC = EAC - AC = Indicates how much will it cost you to complete the project based on the current status
e.g. = 3800 - 1000 = 2800

They key concept here is how to calculate the "Value" of the work that is completed. There are various schools of thought to support this
1> Some consider 50% value reached when 50% of work is completed
2> Some consider 30% value reached when 70% of work is completed and then remaining 70% of value is realised when rest 30% of work achieved
3> Some consider 0% value reached till all 100% of work is completed

These metrics provide lot of insight as to the project progress. This can be mapped and managed using simple excel sheets provided we have the baseline calculated. This metrics analysis system will also account for scope, schedule changes and resource change. Those can be fit into the timeline

What is a Project?

A Project is an initiative, by definition is a temporary endeavor set to create a unique product or a service which has a defined start and end date, specific goals and conditions, defined roles and resp, constraints and risks etc.
Some people do not have a clear idea of what a project consists of. Project is not about setting up a bunch of repetitive Tasks and making sure that they happen. It is much more than that. True projects involves a unique effort (If it is repetitive, it is no longer a project), Projects have clearly defined objectives, have a defined lifespan or a one time effort.

Let's take an example of a Project and how it would be executed.
Again, every project is unique but it does follow some common standards and Guidelines, more or less
Digging a well is a project. It involves a predefined and a set Objective,
Objective - Dig a well so that it provides drinking water to a set of people (Stakeholders).
There are a bunch of people to bear the expenses for the well being dug (Sponsors)
There are a bunch of people who will dig the well (resources)
The well digging initiative will be managed by a person (Project Manager).
The activities performed by the manager will be something along these lines,
- Project sponsors come with a requirement ( Dig a well). They have a budget and an objective and a high level roadmap in mind (Provide water to group of people by end of next 3 months - Budget $5000)
- Project sponsors appoint a Project Manager who starts with meeting the stakeholders involved, sponsors to understand scope, budget, timelines.
- Prepares a Plan based on high level Scope understood, sets Milestones, plans resources, deliverables to be achieved/delivered.
- Prepares a schedule based on this High level plan.
- Gets resources approved, allocated for the project term duration
- Prepares a high level communication plan, risk analysis and management plan, configuration and change management plan
- Gets a sign off on the project charter, SOW
- Holds a project kick off meeting with all the stakeholders involved on the project.
- elaborates on the Project plan with the Project Team wrt identifying the work activities, schedule, risks, mitigation plans etc
- Team designs and develops as per the plan
- Regularly meets with the Team to identify issues, risks, mitigation plans/strategy, works on coordination and facilitation activities.
- Regularly updates the Stakeholders, Sponsors etc on the overall Prject status
- Finally project is delivered to the Stakeholders