>>>>> www.lesliemelcher.com

Home

Management of Changes / Project of Changes (Adaptation Management)
  • 1) Review of Standard Issues in Management
  • 2) Typical Mistakes in Development
  • 3) Change Management: Definition
  • 4) Management of Change: methodology and implementation ( e-tasking and x-project )

1) Typical Business Issues

Cut downtime - Expedite the workflow - Improve appearance - Improve efficiency - Improve speed of delivery - Eliminate redundancy - Expand business territory - Improve speed of production - Improve packaging - Improve image of Company - Improve image of product - Improve image of service(s) offered - Improve image to reflect a customer oriented company - Improve the profit picture - Increase sales - Meet deadlines - Open and find more territories - Organize staff process workflow - Preserve a competitive advantage - Provide a tax advantage - Provide better flow of Information - Establish better communication (access to, and fast distribution of) - Get better and faster support for customers - Get more accurate and easy to use sales report - Methods and tools to better manage inventories and better off load of merchandise methods - Turning around bad situation -> method to anticipate or reduce risks - Re-use of equipment, software and resources to maximize capital expenditures - Diversify risks Cut costs Faster delivery Expand (virtually anything) - Get government support.

2) The Most Classic Mistakes in Development* (see Note)
People-Related Mistakes
Process-Related Mistakes
Product-Related Mistakes
Technology-Related Mistakes
  1. Undermined motivation
  2. Weak personnel
  3. Uncontrolled problem employees
  4. Heroics
  5. Adding people to a late project
  6. Noisy, crowded offices
  7. Friction between developers and customers
  8. Unrealistic expectations
  9. Lack of effective project sponsorship
  10. Lack of stakeholder buy-in
  11. Lack of user input
  12. Politics placed over substance
  13. Wishful thinking
  1. Overly optimistic schedules
  2. Insufficient risk management
  3. Contractor failure Insufficient planning
  4. Abandonment of planning under pressure
  5. Wasted time during the fuzzy front end
  6. Shortchanged upstream activities
  7. Inadequate design
  8. Shortchanged quality assurance
  9. Insufficient management controls
  10. Premature or too frequent convergence
  11. Omitting necessary tasks from estimates
  12. Planning to catch up later
  13. Code-like-hell programming
  1. Requirements gold-plating
  2. Feature creep
  3. Developer gold-plating
  4. Push me, pull me negotiation
  5. Research-oriented development
  1. Silver-bullet syndrome
  2. Overestimated savings from new tools or methods
  3. Switching tools in the middle of a project
  4. Lack of automated source-code control
 

3) Change Management: Definitions

A) Iteration: The need to re-think business management in terms of short iterative delimited projects or goals reduces considerably the exposure to failure or unfulfilled expectations. It is also a very practical way to evaluate and insure whether any deployment or goal can be achieved. For example, the chart below is a request for a second round of financing. Five different phases (color coded) show five variations of the original business model. In essence, this chart is a really a chart of indecision: too many gaps between each phase and little to no relationship between each business objectives and course of action.

Fig. 1 (click to enlarge)

In this case, the development and rollout of a internet based - commercial software - it is time and not cost – that is in jeopardy. The ‘first to market rule' is the differentiate between a win / loose situation. It means loosing or winning the market. In this chart, five different business objectives had been too distant from the company's primary and core business (i.e. software development) and as such, left the company's executives unaware of real time constraints and the reality / feasibility of such a developments effort. Possibilities and business re-orientation of initial goals should become projects, prototyped and tested in short iterative time-frames. In short, the transformation of business objectives into 'iterative business projects' must be an intrinsic part of business planning and part of its definition.

To be Continued.

 

*NOTE: All 'Development Mistakes'' are quoted From:Rapid Development by Steve McConnell / Microsoft Press (A book I highly recommend)