Three-point estimates

As a manager, you are developing schedule for your project.

How do you specify time estimates for project activities?

From analysis,usually, single-point, most-likely estimates are used for activity duration estimating. But these estimates does not represent accurate information and it may lead to schedule overrun situation.

Project manager’s ultimate goal is to create a realistic project schedule that provides a basis for monitoring project progress for the time dimension of the project. Adapting better estimating technique is needed for project success.

Three-point estimating is one of the general estimating methods that helps project managers produce better estimates. Instead of providing discrete activity duration estimates like 3-weeks, 2-days, etc., the accuracy of it can be improved by considering the amount of risk in the original estimate.

Three-point estimates are based on determining three types of estimates: optimistic, most likely and pessimistic. (i.e. Optimistic - 2 weeks, Most Likely - 4 weeks, Pessimistic - 6 weeks)

* Most likely(approx. realistic scenario): The duration of the schedule activity, given the resources likely to be assigned, their productivity, realistic expectations of availability for the schedule activity, dependencies on other participants, and interruptions.

* Optimistic(best-case scenario): The activity duration is based on a best-case scenario of what is described in the most likely estimate.

* Pessimistic(worst-case scenario): The activity duration is based on a worst-case scenario of what is described in the most likely estimate.

An activity duration estimate can be constructed by using an average of the three estimated durations. Three-point estimates are needed for PERT estimates and Monte Carlo simulations.

The PERT is a more rudimentary approach to quantitative risk analysis. PERT applies a weighted average favoring the most likely outcome: (O + 4M + P)/6

How Agile Project Management is different from Traditional one?

There is a proverb, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.“ But this is not true in Project Management. Managers need to learn new techniques and adapt them as quickly as possible to bring project success.

Traditional project management methodologies widely used across different fields. It involves very disciplined and deliberate planning and control methods. The traditional PM approach, is a linear approach where you try to get it all done at one time. Everything should be planned before start executing tasks in the defined order. Traditional project management is best suited for engineering projects like construction, but it is used in all fields nowadays including IT.

The Standish Group 2006 Survey on IT projects revealed,

* 46% of projects over time or budget & 19% of projects failed;

* $80 -145 billion per year is spent on failed and canceled projects;

* 60% - 80% of project failures can be attributed directly to poor requirements gathering, analysis, and management.

In today’s IT world, organizations needs improvement in performance and they expects for - rapid product delivery, increased revenue, more flexibility, coping with change, good quality. Agile Project Management(APM) meets these expectations excellently especially for IT projects.

What is Agile Project Management?

Agile Project Management (APM) is a way of managing projects to deliver customer value via adaptive planning, rapid feedback, continuous improvement and intense human interaction and collaboration.

– Sanjiv Augustine

Agile methodologies are new approach in Project Management and it is effective for IT projects where requirements changes too often. In APM, processes are iterative & incremental. Agile Project Management is particularly appropriate for projects that have:

* clear project value

* innovative business requirements

* unstable requirements

* incremental feature-driven development

* early and active participation of stakeholders

* resources, time & budget are limited

* visual documentation

* collaborative co-located development team

References:

Sanjiv Augustine’s Web Site: http://www.sanjivaugustine.com/

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Contigency Plan & Fallback Plan

Generally, risks are recognized as threats to project success. But risks are also used positively by organizations for efficient, effective project success.In Risk Management processes, Risk response planning process plays important role.

Risk Response Planning is the process of developing various options, strategies and actions to enhance or exploit opportunities and to reduce or eliminate threats to project objectives.

Different risk strategies are used to reduce(or enhance) the probability/impact of the identified or even unidentified/unknown risks. In certain situations, risk management team uses acceptance strategy for known risks as the option based on analysis. As a general rule, all unknown(residual) risks follows acceptance strategy as no information available about them & team will deal with those risks as they occur.

Acceptance strategy can be either passive or active. Passive acceptance requires no action except to document the strategy, leaving the project team to deal with the threats or opportunities as they occur. The active acceptance strategy is to establish a contingency plan, contingency reserve, including amounts of time, money, or resources to handle known or even sometimes potential unknown, threats or opportunities.

Contingency plan describes various specific actions that will be taken if the opportunity or threat occurs. These actions are carried out at the time of risk occurrence. So, these options should be time bound. This is mainly created for active acceptance.

Fallback plan is important in Risk Response Planning. When the contingency plan for a risk is not fully effective, team should implement fallback plan.

How to Manage Power?

“Americans, as a rule, are not very comfortable with power or with its dynamics… And this misunderstanding is becoming increasingly burdensome because in today’s large and complex organizations the effective performance of most managerial jobs requires one to be skilled at the acquisition and use of power.” - John P. Kotter

Though Kotter mentions only about Americans, I feel this statement is true for all managers in the entire world. We need to know how to manage powers by a) knowing what the powers are? & b) how to use them appropriately in the corporate world.

Consider this scenario:

You have been promoted as a manager in your organization, what powers do you think you will have by default?

Generally, an individual has two types of powers upon becoming a manager - the legitimate power of the position and the expert power that led to their appointment (this may not be true in some cases :-)).

Also, manager gets reward power and coercive (punishing) power which generally accompanies legitimate power. Thus, managers may have four of the five powers by default.

Though they are two different words with different meanings, one leads to the other & they are intertwined. Power is defined as the ability to exert influence over others while authority is the foundation on which that power is built. But power does not necessarily imply a commonly accepted authority to exert influence over others.

A person’s power depends to a considerable extent on how the person is perceived by others. In other words, power and authority come from the person being influenced - not the person in the more powerful position. If the follower chooses to not follow them, they are no longer leaders.

“Some people have more net influence than others and hence … more power.” - Larison

The power and influence theories explain leadership effectiveness in terms of the amount and type of power that leader possesses and how he or she exercises power. Undoubtedly, among the most popular and widely accepted concepts of social/organizational power is the five-fold typology developed by French and Raven in 1959.

In their article, French and Raven (1959) identified five bases of power which an agent, O, can exert over a person, P. Those bases of power were:

1. Reward power,

2. Coercive power,

3. Legitimate power,

4. Expert power, and

5. Referent power.

He also discussed about the sixth type of power - informational influence/power, which was not classified as one of the primary bases of power. Hence it is omitted in studies about the bases of power.

Legitimate power

* The power a leader has as a result of his or her position

* Subordinate’s most likely outcome is compliance

* How to use this power?

* Be cordial, polite, and confident

* make appropriate requests

* follow proper channels

* exercise power regularly and enforce compliance

Coercive power

* The power a leader has to punish or control

* Subordinate’s most likely outcome is resistance

* How to use this power?

* Inform subordinates of rules and penalties

* understand the situation before acting & warn before punishing

* administer punishment consistently & punish in private

Reward power

* The power to give positive benefits or rewards

* Subordinate’s most likely outcome is compliance

* comes as part of formal authority

* Influence over wages and promotions

* How to use this power?

* Verify compliance and accomplishments

* offer rewards for desired actions and behaviors

* offer credible rewards that are desired by subordinates

Expert power

* The influence/power a leader can exert as a result of his or her expertise, skills, or knowledge

* Subordinate’s most likely outcome is commitment

* How to use this power?

* Act confident and decisive

* keep informed

* don’t threaten subordinates’ self-esteem - be approachable

* Willing to share your knowledge with others

Referent power

* The power of a leader that arises because of a person’s desirable resources or based on charisma, admired personal traits

* Subordinate’s most likely outcome is commitment

* The referring individual voluntarily molds him or herself to the referent person

* How to use this power?

* Treat subordinates fairly

* defend subordinates’ interests

* be sensitive to subordinates’ needs & feelings

Finally, anyone knows about connectional power?

Though connectional power is not dealt under the bases of power, I think giving a brief idea about it at this place would be appropriate. Connectional power is a variation of referent power, which reflects the influence that leaders possess as a result of whom they know and the support they engender from others as a result.

Hayden suggests the following keys to exercise power effectively & successfully. They are to:

1) be sensitive to the sources of power and be consistent with the expectations of others;

2) recognize the costs, risks, and benefits of the different bases of power and draw on whichever is appropriate to the situation and person;

3) appreciate that each power base has merit;

4) possess career goals that allow development and use of each type of power;

5) act maturely and exercise self-control, avoiding impulses and egotistical displays; and

6) understand that power is necessary to get things done

Forming Storming Norming Performing Developmental Model

We can find Bruce Tuckman’s Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing model, the most famous model for team development, has more relation to Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s Continuum theory and Situational Leadership Theory. Though he came up with four stages(forming-storming-norming-performing) in his initial publication in 1965, he added ‘Adjourning’(some refers this as ‘Mourning’) , to include team breaks after project completion, in later 1970s.

Tannenbaum & Schmidt Continuum theory explains the relationship between the levels of freedom that a manager chooses to give to a team, and the level of authority used by him. Resemblance between Continuum theory & this theory is in existence of different team developmental levels & movement between those levels as team develops.

Situational Leadership deals with the relationship between follower’s developmental level & leadership behavior(directive/supportive) based on the task/situation. SL resembles same structure if we represent the four stages in different quadrants.

Tuckman’s theory aims on the way in which a team handles a task from the initial formation of the team through to the completion of the project. Development level moves from one stage to the other sequentially as they mature as a team but time taken in each stage depends on understanding of and commitment to the goals of the team.

The five stages of team development have been characterized as:

Forming:

* Formation of team happens & the team comes together
* Members feel anxious and spend their time finding out about each other
* Individual roles and responsibilities are unclear
* Highly depending on the manager/leader
* Equivalent Situational Leadership style: Directing

Storming:

* Team members come up with ideas through debates on how to proceed with the task
- about task priorities;
- clarity on purpose of the task;
- roles & responsibilities and
- processes to follow
* Influence of ideas and power struggles may arise
* Compromises may be required to enable progress
* Team members may challenge the leader & leader coaches
* Equivalent Situational Leadership style: Selling

Norming:

* Work as a team starts
* Roles and responsibilities are clear and accepted
* Team begin to exhibit participative behavior & decision making happens by group agreement
* Commitment, trust and unity increases
* Equivalent Situational Leadership style: Supporting

Performing:

* This stage is characterized by high levels of:
- goal orientation,
- interpersonal relations,
- independence, motivation,
- knowledge and
- competence in team members
* Team know what,why & how of the task they are executing
* High level of respect in the communication between team members
* Team expects delegation of task instead of instruction/assistance
* Equivalent Situational Leadership style: Delegating

Adjourning:

* Happens when project completes
* Members moving out of the group after project goal achievement
* Everyone can move on to new things
* Achievement celebrated
* Members feel difficulty as they have developed close working relationships with other team members