Management Consulting
Sep 01 2010
The Road Less Travelled: Standing at the OCM Crossroads
“It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.” Winston Churchill
In most cases, complex projects by their very nature require the use of multiple functional and technical disciplines to achieve project goals. However, these projects are often pursued using a single approach, driven down a road that is too narrow to realize the benefits of employing a comprehensive, collaborative framework. Whether a project involves systems or data integration, adoption of mobile computing technologies, managing content on portals, or improving business performance through process improvements, resulting Organizational Change Management (OCM) implications are often overlooked. It is at these ‘OCM Crossroads’ where the impacts of impending changes are found, requiring the diligence to develop action plans and strategies.
Sep 01 2010
Techniques for Eliciting Quality Requirements – Interviews
Last week I wrote about how to analyze existing documentation to gather requirements. Today I am writing about how to use interviews to gather quality requirements. Most of you have probably used interviews in the past, but I hope this blog entry can provide some additional information that you may find helpful.
Interviews can be with one person or a group of people. It is important that if you conduct interviews in groups to make sure that one person does not dominate the conversation and that everyone gets a chance to respond. The way that interviews differ from brainstorming, requirements workshops, or focus groups is that they are a more formal interaction. A lot of preparation is needed before conducting interviews, but they can be a great source of information. There are three main phases to the interview process.
- Prepare for the interview
- Conduct the interview
- Post interview follow-up and confirmation
Aug 24 2010
Techniques for Eliciting Quality Requirements – Document Analysis
The Business Analysis Body of Knowledge (BABOK) which is the current documented standard for Business Analysts lists the following techniques as ways to elicit requirements from stakeholders.
- Brainstorming
- Document Analysis
- Focus Groups
- Interface Analysis
- Interviews
- Observation
- Prototyping
- Requirements Workshops
- Survey/Questionnaire
In this post I am going to focus on Document Analysis and how it can be a useful step in your requirements gathering efforts. Blog posts in the future will touch on some of the other techniques.
Aug 19 2010
Use cases as the first step in improving an existing process
I am currently working on a project where the goal is to improve an existing process around test data creation and validation. There have been issues where test data has not been created in time and this has caused projects that are dependent on that data to have to be delayed or implemented without full testing. One of the solutions is just to throw more resources at the problem which has helped some. The better and longer lasting solution is to reengineer the test data creation process so more can be done in the time allotted and errors can be reduced. I have been tasked as a BA on the project to help update the existing process. It is difficult to look at a whole process from end to end and try and find ways to improve it. One of the things that can be done is to break the entire process into smaller sections. I have found that creating use cases is a great w
Aug 18 2010
Introduction:
This month’s blog entry explores the complex relationship between project success and project leadership. Risk of failure is potentially higher for IT projects than commonly acknowledged and, by all accounts, it would appear that success hinges less on strict adherence to methodology than on leadership. Leadership, of course, assumes manifold forms, but in the context of this discussion I narrow it down to its core: the moral/ethical responsibility of project managers to "tell it like it is," so that appropriate decision-makers can make effective decisions in a timely manner.
This entry will be published in 3 parts:
- Part 1 will discusses some of the long-term trends in project management, that have been recorded over the last 15 years. Given the ever-growing emphasis on rigorous management of IT projects, the interpretation of these findings continues being debated, but the conclusions are unambiguous.
- Part 2 will shine the spotlight on ethics in the context of project success. Ethics in project management elude rigid definition, particularly as the PM discipline has evolved to encompass truly global projects, but even so, project management success is not synonymous with project success.
- Part 3 will make the link between success, leadership, and ethics explicit.
I’m curious what experience others have had in this regard. Are there other aspects of leadership that play a pivotal role in your projects? Are ethics a primary driver of decision-making in your organization… or an ancillary consideration? What effect have these played on the successful delivery of your projects?
Please feel free to comment below.