Design of Experiments

Design of Experiments is one of the key Tools and Technique of Qulaity Planning Process.

Design of Experiments (DOE) is a statistical technoque that identifies the elements or variables that will have the greatest effect on overall project outcomes. It is usually used concerning the project’s product but can be also applied to project management processes to examine trade-offs.

DOE will equips the project manager with a statistical framework that allows to change important variables at once insted of changing variable at a time.

DOE determines what variables has the greatest effect on the project outcome and helps to optimise the process.  

Confrontation

Confrontation is one of the conflict resolving methods.

Conflicts usually occurs between more than one parties and once the conflict occurred and brought to PM attention, its his/her responsibility to resolve the conflict favouring to the interest of the project.

Confrontation is based on the assumption of “One right solution exist for the problem”. The PM gathers all facts related to the conflict with the help of conflicting parties and presents before them to make the decision.

This is always a permanent solution and most favoured techniques used by the PMs to solve the conflicts.

-Posted by Dhana

Project Failure

- Will Wieder, CIO of Ministry Health Care

Will Weider is CIO of Ministry Health Care and Affinity Health System. He loves to share what he learned through his mistakes and other crazy things in the life of a healthcare CIO. Visit him at http://candidcio.com/ Read original article at http://candidcio.com/2008/04/09/failure/

My personal approach to IT management centers around success. Most IT projects fail. Some quite spectacularly, but most in a quieter way. I believe these are the three leading contributors to failure:

Poor Project Plans and Resource Allocation

My personal experience is that most IT departments do not have a good sense for the amount of time they have to spend on IT projects. All of the data I have collected since I have been studying this suggests that only 15% to 25% of total staff time is available to work on new projects. If organizations take on more work than they can complete, everything proceeds at a snail’s pace and nothing ever truly gets done.

The only way to manage resources in a large organization is to have detailed plans for every project and to look at the resource requirements across all of your plans.

Vendor Performance

Just as IT departments over-allocate their resources, so do vendors. Vendor performance issues are usually more related to them not providing services in the time expected (or not having a common expectation with the vendor) than bad software. However, sucky software is still an issue.

Lack of Clear Expectations

If someone’s goal is just to implement some software than, in my opinion, they have failed by default. Each IT implementation should have clear business benefits and those benefits need to remain insight throught the effort.

Am I missing other common contributors to failure?

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Delphi Technique

One of the Risk Identification technique, used to gather information.

In Delphi Techique, the participants dont usually know each other, nor they have to be present at the same location.

A Moderator or project Manager will usually communicate with the participants to identify the Risk and consolidate all the risks identified by them.

This is one of the best technique of Risk identification, as the participants (not necessarily be only from project team) would not be influenced by other participants, as they usually do not know each other.

-Posted by Sundar

Compromise

Compromise is one of the conflict resolving methods.

Conflicts usually occurs between more than one parties and once the conflict occurred and brought to PM attention, its his/her responsibility to resolve the conflict favouring to the interest of the project.

To achieve this, the each/all parties involved in the conflict gives up something and reach a convincing resolution to the favour of project interest. As all parties gives up something, in this method no one WINS or LOSES.

This will be a permanent solution if all parites makes the firm commitment towards the resolution made.

-Posted by Dhana

 

Defect Repair

Approved Defect Repair is one of the input of Direct and Manage Project Execution and output of the Integrated Change Control Process.

Approved Defect Repairs authorise corrections to product defects that are discovered during the Perform Qualit Assurance process primarily during product inspection or during quality audits.

The difference between a validated defect repair and approved defect repair is that the validated defect repair is the result of a reinspection of the original defect repair.

-Posted by Sundar

 

 

Conflict

Conflict is the incompatibility of objectives between more than one party. Simply saying, one party’s objective will block one or more party’s objective.

Conflicts are quite common in projects which require involvement between various units, departments of the company, customer, vendors.

Once a conflict arises the PM should resolve the conflict to the favour of the project interest.

-Posted by Dhana

 

Decomposition

Decomposition is the key Tool and Technique while creating Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

This technique involves breaking down the deliverables in to smaller, more manageable components of work. Using along with WBS templates, decomposition is to break down Level two or further lower level components which is a deliverable, phases or subprojects.

The purpose of decomposition is to breakdown deliverables  to easily plan,execute,monitor and control, and closeout the project deliverable.

-Poeted by Sundar

Code of Accounts

Code of Accounts are used in the WBS. This is an unique identifiers which are assigned to the branches of the WBS elements. Project team uses these identifiers to identify or refer the WBS elements.

Example

Part of the project WBS

2. Project Planning
   2.1  Gather Project Requirement
   2.2  Document Project Requirement
   2.3  Define the Project scope

2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 are Code Of Accounts in the above WBS

-Posted by Dhana

Checklist

Checklist is a document which provides the list of steps taken to accomplish a specific task/project phase/project. Each step will be checked off as completed once it was completed.

These checklists will vary depends on industry, company and projects. Usally the Project Office will design and define the Project Checklist template for the use of their PMO folks based on their company processes and methodology.

These checklists will be handy for the PM to follow and monitor their project activities by extending or customizing the checklist by plugging in their critical/important activities.

-Posted by Dhana