Steps taken for Project Closure?

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Steps taken for Project Closure?

Though project ends normally, it is important that an orderly set of processes be followed in order to bring it in closure:-

1. Project Sponsor Acceptance:-

• It is necessary
• Project Manager has to make sure that all deliverables, scopes are completed according to sponsor's requirements.
• Shortsighted sponsors gets satisfied to see that they will get enough money by the project.
• Knowledgeable sponsors get satisfied after the whole project is bug-free.
• Project Manager should provide:-

1. Clearly define the acceptance criteria for the project at early stages of project.
2. Document completion of all project deliverables and milestones. 

2. The Final Project Report:-

• The objective of the report and presentation should be to give the project sponsor confidence that the project has been completed as outlined in the business case, project charter and project plan.
• By gaining this confidence, the sponsor or client will be more likely to formally accept the project that will allow for a smooth termination of the project.
• It provides background and history of the project.

3. The Final Meeting and Presentation:-

• If final report gains confidence, the final meeting and presentation should be a simple, straightforward affair.
• Useful for:-

communicating that the project is over.
Transferring the information system from the project team to the organization.
Acknowledging contributions.
Getting formal signoff.

4. Closing the Project:-
The requirements for administrative closure includes:-
1. Verifying that all deliverables and open items are complete. 
2. Verifying the project sponsor or customer's formal acceptance of the project.
3. Organizing and archiving all project deliverables and documentation.
4. Planning for the release of all project resources (i.e. project team members, technology, equipment, facilities etc.)
5. Planning for the evaluations and reviews of the project team members and the project itself
6. Closing of all project accounts.
7. Planning a celebration to mark the end of a (successful) project. 

Outsourcing: Different reasons, types and sins

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Outsourcing? Different reasons for outsourcing?

Outsourcing:-

• Outsourcing can be defined as the procurement of products or services from an external vendor, supplier, or manufacturer.
• Analogous to Procurement Management.
• Strategic approach
• Beginning of Outsourcing phenomenon started in 1989 mainly when Kodak outsourced and increased its profit.
• Outsourcing expanded to include BPO other than just I.T. i.e. accounting, HRM, R&D etc)
• Outsourcing to other country gives advantage of labor arbitrage i.e. cheap labour.
• Can be organization-level decision or project-level decision.
• Although low cost is one advantage for outsourcing and offshoring, the objective should be to increase flexibility and quality.

Types of Outsourcing:-
1. Full Insourcing:-

•     Products & services would be retained internally.
•     Project team is responsible for all the project's processes and scope. 

2. Selective Outsourcing:-

•     Best approach
•     Provides greater flexibility to choose which project processes deliverable should be outsourced and which should be kept internal

3. Full Outsourcing:-
    An organization or project acquires all products or services from external sources.
    We would have a virtual organization or project.

Offshore Outsourcing Myths:-
1. IT offshoring is a new phenomenon:- In 1980's, when production of computer chips was transferred to Asia.
2. Offshoring is the one strategy a company should pursue to reduce software development costs:- Using computer aided software engineering tools can improve productivity and reduce development time.
3. IT work that's shipped overseas will stay there:- offshoring will become less attractive because work is repetitive and boring, so it will be automated in future.
4. Offshoring will result in significant unemployment in technology sector:- It creates new global markets for products and services.
5. IT wages will fall across the board because of foreign competition
6. It will become less necessary to teach programming and other technical skills to college students because these skills won't be in such high demand in the US anymore.
7. By hiring programmers overseas, companies can lower development costs by 80% or more:- But additional costs must be incurred such as vendor searches, negotiation, contract development, severance pay for downsized domestic employees, as well as reduced productivity due to morale issues and completion of knowledge transfer to vendor.
8. Quality is lower in offshore IT operations:- almost same errors found in both program made in India and USA.
9. Only routine and mechanical IT tasks are candidates for offshore outsourcing.
10. It's always best to outsource IT work to developing countries with a large, low cost labour pool of programmers. 

Seven Sins of Outsourcing:-
1. Outsourcing activities that shouldn't be outsourced:- 

• Outsourcing results in an automatic reduction of cost and an increase in performance. 
• However this view is non realistic and many organizations outsource to mimic their competitors or success stories in trade journal. 
• A loss of control and the risk of the vendor going out of business can have grave consequences for the company.

2. Selecting the wrong vendor:-
Good vendor should be selected according to two organizations' cultures, as well as a commitment to continuous improvement, flexibility and a long term relationship.

3. Writing a Poor Contract:-
Well-written contract should be precise, complete, provide incentives for the right behavior, balanced and flexible.

4. Overlooking Personnel Issues:-

• Can have negative impact on employees loyalty and sense of job security. Leads to reduced productivity, dysfunctional behaviors, or a mass exodus of employees. Organizations must retain and motivate key employees.

5. Losing control over the Outsourced activity

6. Overlooking the hidden costs of Outsourcing:- hidden costs includes searching for vendors, negotiating and writing the contract, and managing the vendor relationships.

7. Failing to plan an Exit strategy

Leadership: Its practices, styles and approaches

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5 Practices of exemplary Leadership? Explain Leadership styles and approaches.

Leadership:-

• Different from Management, but not for the reasons most people think.
• It isn't mystical and mysterious.
• Nothing to do with having "charisma" or other exotic personality traits.
• It isn't the province of a chosen few.
• Nor is leadership necessarily better than management or a replacement for it.

5 Practices of Exemplary Leadership:- (MICEE)

1. Model The Way

2. Inspire a Shared Vision

3. Challenge the Process

4. Enable Others to Act

5. Encourage the Heart

1. Model the Way

    Leader's behavior wins respect, not his/her title position within organization. Say less but let employees see your behavior and daily action. People follow the person first, not the plan.

2. Inspire a Shared Vision

    Leader should have vision, dream that should inspire people so they become committed to a purpose. Should ignite the passion in others.

3. Challenge the Process

•     Don't reply on fate or luck.
•     venture out and accept challenges
•     challenges status quo to innovate, grow, improve
•     Leaders are also early adopters of innovation but it needs risk which people             should also take and should learn from their failures.

4. Enable Others to Act

5. Encourage the Heart

Leadership Styles:- (CAADPC)

1. The Coercive Style

2. The Authoritative Style

3. The Affiliative Style

4. The Democratic Style

5. The Pacesetting Style

6. The Coaching Style

1. The Coercive Style (Do as I say)

• Effective in crisis to kick start a turnaround situation, when dealing with problem of employee, or for achieving immediate compliance. 
• Extreme down-to-approach can flop it because people will soon lose their initiative, motivation, commitment, and sense of ownership because it makes people resentful and disillusioned. 

2. The Authoritative Style (Come with me)

• empowers people to choose their own means for achieving it.
• provides vision and enthusiasm
• motivates people by saying their work has bigger role.
• Everyone feels their work has meaning and purpose.
• Fails when leader is inexperienced but work with experts.
• Leader can undermine an effective team if he appear pompous, out of touch, or overbearing. 

3. The Affiliative Style (People come first)

• centers on value of individual rather than goals and tasks and attempts to keep people happy by creating harmony among them.
• Leader attempts to build strong emotional bond that translate into strong loyalty.
• Leader does not impose unnecessary rules and structures.
• Best when situation needs building team harmony, morale, trust or communication.
• Not effective when people need some structure to go through a complex tasks. They then are left directionless and feeling rudderless.
• Overcaring/Overnurturing, praises creates perception that mediocrity is tolerated.

4. The Democratic Style (What do you think?)

• Leader spends time with people's ideas, while building trust, respect and commitment.
• morale tends to be high, people's flexibility and responsibility we increased, more realistic idea of what can/not be done.
• Best while buy-in decisions, consensus or to gain input from others.
• Can lead to endless meetings in vain attempts to gain group consensus which causes conflicts, confusion and perception that group is leaderless. 
• inappropriate when team does not have competence or experience to offer sound advise.

5. The Pacesetting Style (do as I do, now)

• Leader obsessed with doing things better and faster for him or herself and everyone else.
• Poor performers quickly identified and replaced if standards aren't met.
• Leader sets example for high performance, morale can deteriorate if people feel overwhelmed by the pacesetter's demands for excellence and performance. 
• goals poorly communicated.
• People lose their direction or sense of their work is part of larger picture. 
• If leader leaves, people will feel adrift since pacesetting leader sets all directions. 
• Useful when quick results required from highly motivated, self-directed and competent team.

6. Coaching Style (Try this)

• Helps people identify their unique strengths and weaknesses so that they can reach their personal and career goals.
• Encourages people to set long term professional goal and then help them develop a plan for achieving them
• minor failures acceptable and viewed as positive learning experiences 
• least used
• Ineffective if people not ready to change or when leader does not have the knowledge, capability, or desire to be a coach.

Steps in Project Risk Management

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Different steps in Project Risk Management? Explain.

Project Risk:-
    An uncertain event or condition that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on the project objectives.

Project Risk Management:-
     The systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk. It includes maximizing the probability and consequences of positive events and minimizing the probability and consequences of adverse events.

Steps in Project Risk Management:-  (PIASMRE):-

1. Risk Planning
2. Identification
3. Assessment
4. Strategies
5. Monitoring and Control
6. Response
7. Evaluation

1. Risk Planning:- 

• Commits that adequate resources(time, people and technology) will be in place to properly plan for and manage the various risks of the IT project.
• Stakeholders must be committed to process of identifying, analyzing and responding to threats and opportunities. 
• Focuses on preparation.

2. Risk Identification:- 

• Identifies various risks to the project.
• threats and opportunities must be identified.
• true problem must be addressed and not just symptom.
• causes and effects to be understood for effective strategies/responses.

3. Risk Assessment:-

• Analyzing risk. 
• tells how to deal with project risks.
• qualitative and quantitative approaches should be used.

4. Risk strategies:- 

• How to deal with various project risks 
• Focuses on one of them:-

             Accept or ignore the risk
             Avoid the risk completely
             Reduce the likelihood or impact of the risk if it occurs.
             Transfer the risk to someone else.

5. Risk Monitoring and Control:-

• Risk owners should monitor the various risk triggers so that well-informed decisions and appropriate actions can take place.

6. Risk Response:-

• Risk owner must commit resources and take action once a risk threat or opportunity is made known. 
• This action normally follows the planned risk strategy.

7. Risk Evaluation:-

• Provides basis for lesson learned and lays foundation for identifying best practices.
• It influences how an organization will plan, prepare and commit to IT risk management
• Focuses on:- 

           How did we do?
           What can we do better next time?
           What lessons did we learn?
           What best practices can be incorporated in risk management processes? 

Project Procurement Management Processes

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Processes involved in Project Procurement Management? Explain its components.

Definition:-

   The contract management and change control processes required to administer contracts or purchase orders issued by authorized project team members.

    It also includes administering any contract issued by an outside organization(the buyer) that is acquiring the project from the performing organization(the seller), and administering contractual obligations placed on project team by contract.

Project Procurement Processes:-   (PPRSCC)

1. Plan Purchases and acquisition

2. Plan Contracting

3. Request Seller Responses

4. Select Sellers

5. Contract Administration

6. Contract Closure

1. Plan Purchases and Acquisitions:- 

• Making the decision as to what will be purchased or acquired as well as determining the logistics of when purchases will be made and how.
• Determines which project will be fulfilled internally and which externally.
• This decision is same as "make-or-buy" decision.

2. Plan Contracting:-

• Documenting the product, services, or results needed as well as identifying potential sellers, vendors, suppliers, contractors, sub-contractors, or other service providers.
• focuses on developing procurement documents such as request for proposal, used for solicit bids, quotes, or proposals from sellers.
• Done so that different sellers can be compared and evaluated.

3. Request Seller Responses:-

• Obtaining bids, quotes, proposals, literature and other information from potential sellers or service providers. 

4. Select Sellers:- 

• Negotiating, selecting and contracting with a seller for a particular product or service.
• Selected according to analysis done in "Plan purchases and Acquisition"
• Price or cost are important consideration
• Once seller is selected, contract is signed.

5. Contract Administration:-

• Managing the relationship and contract between the buyer and seller. This includes reviewing and documenting the seller's performance, contract changes, and taking corrective action when necessary.
• It includes:-
• Authorizing and coordinating the contracted work at the appropriate time.
• Monitoring the contractor's performance with respect to scope, schedule, budget and quality.
• Managing scope in terms of its definition and change control.
• Risk identification, assessment and control.
• Monitoring that all payments, as stipulated in the contract, are made.
• Determining whether the contract needs to be amended.
• Deciding if the contract should be terminated early for just cause, convenience, or when the seller is in default. 

6. Contract Closure:-

• Centers on verifying that all of the work outlined in the contract is finished.
• Includes updating records to reflect final results, archiving information for future use, as well as other administrative activities.
• buyers send notice that everything is provided and seller, everything is acceptable.
• Early termination occurs when one party is unable to fulfill their rights and responsibilities. 
• All the lessons learnt should be identified for future references. 

Role of Project Manager

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Role of Project Manager in an IT project. What skill sets are required?

Role of Project Manager:-

• Must play managerial role that focuses on planning, organizing and controlling.
• Responsible for developing project plan, organizing project resources and then overseeing execution of plan
• perform administrative functions:- performance reviews, project tracking and reporting, and other general day to day responsibilities.
• must know when to stay the course, when to adapt, change the project plan.
• Nurture relationships among various stakeholders.
• must have leadership quality:- while managerial role focuses on planning, organizing and controlling, leadership centers on getting people motivated.

Some attributes/skill sets are:-

• The ability to communicate with people.
• The ability to deal with people:- 

         Soft skills

         good listener

         sense of humour

         helpful

• The ability to create and sustain relationships:-

        Act as peacemaker and negotiator 

        Good salesperson

• The ability to organize:-

        develop project plan

        acquire resources

        create an effective project environment

Organizational Structure and Project Planning

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• Structures are created within an organization to manage input, processing and output of resources.
• Many organization adopt structure based upon functions, some based on products or customers.
• These structures may use brand management or geographical divisions. 
• As long as firm performs well, a particular structure and strategy will exist.
• When it does not do well, change in structure is needed.

There are three types of Organization Structures:

1. Functional Organization

2. Project Organization

3. Matrix Organization.

1. Functional Organization:

• traditional organizational form
• based upon organizing resources to perform specialized tasks or activities in order to attain the goals of organization.
• Projects in function organization are typically coordinated through customary channels and housed within a particular function.
• Two main issues that must be resolved at outset of project:

           1. Who will be responsible for project?

           2. What resources will each sub-unit provide?

 Advantages:-

1. Increased flexibility.

2. Breadth and depth of knowledge and experience.

3. Less duplication (coordination of resources and activities can lead to less duplication of resources)

Disadvantages:-

1. Determining authority and responsibility:- who has authority and responsibility for a project must be resolved at outset, especially when project involves more than one functional area.

2. Poor Response Time:- Projects may take longer if important decisions have to pass through several layers of management and across several functional areas.

3. Poor Integration:- The individuals in a function area may act in their own best interests instead of taking holistic view. Duplication may increase. 

2. Project Organization:-

Supports project as the dominant form of business.

Each project is treated as separate and relatively independent unit within the organization.

Project Manager has sole authority over and responsibility for project and its resources, while organization provides financial and administrative controls.

Both Project Manager and Project team are typically assigned to particular project on a full-time basis.

Advantages:-

1. Clear Authority and responsibility.

2. Improved communication.

3. High level of integration.

Disadvantage:-

1. Project Isolation.

2. Duplication of effort.

3. Projectitis

3. The Matrix Organization:-

• It is combination of vertical functional structure and horizontal project structure.
• provides many opportunities and challenges.
• Ability to integrate areas and resources throughout an organization
• each project team member will have more than one boss, leading to the possibility of confusion, frustration, conflict and mixed loyalties. 
• Matrix organization can take on various forms that can create hybrid organizations. The most common forms include:-

       Balanced Matrix:- Project manager focuses on defining all of the activities of project, while function managers determine how those activities will be carried out.

     Functional Matrix:- Project Manager focuses on coordinating the project activities, while functional manager completes activities related to particular area.

      Project Matrix:- Project Manager has most authority and responsibility for defining and completing the project activities, while functional managers provide guidance and resources, as needed.

Advantages:-

1. High level of integration

2. Improved communication.

2. Increased project focus.

Disadvantages:-

1. Higher potential for conflict.

2. Poorer response time.