Raid based approach for efficient project management in a pragmatic way towards outstanding project delivery

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


6th Annual Conference on Project Management Leadership



Authors
Phanindra Kishore DBV Email: [email protected]




AVACorp Technologies Pvt. Ltd
East West Center, 3rd & 4th Floor,
#128, Nelson Manickam Road,
Aminjikarai,
Chennai - 600 029
Phone: [phone]

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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 projec t 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 engagement s.
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 a nd 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 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

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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 c overing 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 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

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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.




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.

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.

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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:

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.

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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 ar ea:

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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 defi ned 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 me etings, team
meetings, past Organization risk registers, project symptoms 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.

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 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.

 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.