Archive for the ‘Prince 2’ Category

The Definite List of Project Management Methodologies

Freitag, Januar 16th, 2009

This is a gem.
Craig Brown from the ‚Better Projects‘-Blog (here) created a presentation on Jurgen Appelo’s Definite List of Project Management Methodologies.  Jurgen published his list first in his blog over at noop.nl and now moved it into a Google Knol here.  Craig put it into a great tongue in cheek presentation.  I very much enjoyed it, as such here it is:

Software Project Methods

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: software agile)

Governance Frameworks for Public Project Development and Estimation (Klakegg et al., 2008)

Montag, November 3rd, 2008

 Governance Frameworks for Public Project Development and Estimation (Klakegg et al., 2008)

Klakegg, Ole Jonny; Williams, Terry; Magnussen, Ole Morten; Glasspool, Helene: Governance Frameworks for Public Project Development and Estimation; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), Supplement, pp. S27–S42.
DOI: 10.1002/pmj.20058

Klakegg et al. compare different public governance frameworks, particularly the UK’s Ministry of Defense, UK’s Office of Government Commerce, and Norway’s framework. The authors find that „the frameworks have to be politically and administratively
well anchored. A case study particularly looking into cost and time illustrates how the framework influences the project through scrutiny. The analysis shows the governance frameworks are important in securing transparency and control and clarifies the role of sponsor“ (p. S27)

Their analysis starts with the question of „Who are governance relevant stakeholders?„. The authors show two different general approaches to public governance stakeholders – Shareholder Value Systems and Communitarian Systems. The Shareholder Value System is based on the principle that only shareholders are legitimate stakeholders – a system which is used in the US, UK, and Canada. On the other hand the Communitarian System is based on the idea that all impacted communities and persons are relevant stakeholders – a system typically found in Norway, Germany, and numerous other countries. A secondary line of thought is the difference between Western and Asian stakeholder ideas, whereas the Asian idea is underlining the concept of family and the Western idea is underlining the relationship concept.

To pin down the idea of public project governance the authors draw parallels to corporate governance with it’s chain of management ↔ board ↔ shareholder ↔ stakeholder. The APM defines project governance as the corporate governance that is related to projects with the aim that sustainable alternatives are choosen and delivered efficiently. Thus the authors define a governance framework as an organised structure, authoritive in organisation with processes and rules established to ensure the project meets its purpose.

The reviewed governance frameworks show interesting differences – for example in the control basis, reviewer roles, report formats, supporting organisation, and mode of initiation. The principles they are based on range from management of expectations, to establishing hurdles to cross, to making recommendations. Focus of the reviews can be the business case, outputs, inputs, or used methods.

The importance of context in programme management: An empirical review of programme practices (Pellegrinelli et al., 2007)

Dienstag, Juli 15th, 2008

 Context in Programs

Pellegrinelli, Sergio; Partington, David; Hemingway, Chris; Mohdzainb, Zaher; Shah, Mahmood: The importance of context in programme management – An empirical review of programme practices; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 25 (2007), No. 1, pp. 41-55.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2006.06.002

Pellegrinelli et al. study actual practices on programs which mainly consist of projects. Surprisingly they find that the OGC’s Managing Successful Programmes framework (MSP) is not consistently adopted even when its use is mandated by the organisation. Furthermore they found that following MSP rigorously leads to a controlling dominated management agenda and not a empowering agenda. Their main findings for each MSP category are

  • Organisation & Leadership – mostly living on paper only, IT rather than business counterparts perform the roles needed
  • Benefits Management – mostly unquantifiable benefits or intangible benefits, general perception that this approach doesn’t fit RUP  (or any of the other unified processes of software development)
  • Stakeholder Management & Communication – n/a
  • Risk Management & Issue resolution – mostly risk management is missing completely on a program level
  • Program Planning & Control – often overruled by central head quarter
  • Business Case Management – Only symbolic artifact or only used to secure funding and never updated afterwards
  • Quality Management – are more adoptions of organisational practices already in place than the MSP processes

In short Pellegrinelli et al. revealed significant and on-going crafting of programme content, structures and processes to reconcile divergent aims and interests, to expedite progress in the face of adversity and to engage multiple sponsors, contributors and stakeholders. Thus the authors showed the importance and influence of context, namely the dynamic cultural, political and business environment in which the programmes operate, and the organisationally embedded nature of programme management.