Contracts - Project outsourcing pricing models

In software outsourcing projects, the type of contract is always based on the type of client, scope of the project and sometimes the chosen technology domain. Two widely used pricing models in outsourcing are; Fixed Price contract and Time & Material (T &M ) Contract

Fixed Priced Projects: We can follow a Fixed Price Model for projects that are specifically defined in terms of their requirements, schedules and project path. This model is preferred by clients who have a clear project scope available with them at the onset of the project, along with detailed software requirements specifications (SRS).

Under this pricing approach, we work with our clients to define their expected deliverable outcomes to determine a mutually agreed fixed price.

T & M projects: The Time and Materials ( T&M) price model is preferred when the scope of requirements can not be specified at the beginning of the project. This model is suitable for projects which are in their initial stage of development, and specifications have not yet been clearly defined.

The client pays an hourly development fee; which is a fee agreed mutually at the time of agreement. The hourly fee payable varies depending upon the complexity of the task, and the desired experience and qualification of the personnel involved in the development.

Why Men Don't Listen And Women Can't Read Maps !

Don't get surprised by the title of this post. This is the name of the book I read very recently and I am recommending to you ( is a must if you are married). The complete title of the book is - "Why Men Don't Listen And Women Can't Read Maps": Why we're different and What to do about it" !

What you guessed is right... it is written by a couple ! Allan Pease and Barbara Pease. They explains why we want to watch TV when she wants to talk and why she is complaining 'he is not listening'.

To quote Amazon

" men and women live in the same world, but they experience it as if they came from two different worlds. Boys like things, girls like people. Every boy wants to be in a gang, and wants a gun; every girl has her best friend, with whom she shares her secrets. Men want status and power, women want love. It's amazing, he concludes, that they can ever live together"











And big thanks to my sister for presenting this to me !

Booch Talks on Software !

Yahoo User Interface (YUI) theater has a number of good video presentations. This particular one attracted me.

This is a talk from the father of UML Grady Booch on "The Promise, The Limits, The Beauty of Software"

Grady Booch is an IBM Fellow and one of the co-creators of UML. In this talk, he discusses the complex matrix of decisions and processes, both intentional and unintentional, that lead to the software designs and architectures upon which we increasingly rely in everyday life. This is a version of a talk originally given to the British Computer Society in honor of Alan Turing.

Change ! Change ! Change!

According to Winston Churchill "There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction". Now I am changing my company and relocating to a new place.

The details will be added soon !

Power plays in project management

We are aware of the triple constraints of Scope, Time and Cost and how it can influence the course of a project.

But still there are many other factors which can affect the project. For example, politics; office politics. From one perspective, the office politics is influencing people and getting things done. But I am talking about the flip side of this, where the influence is for not getting things done for the project, but for individual benefits. It is the behavior and motivation of the people that makes the office politics worse.

This kind of office politics and ego can jeopardize any on track project and destroy the morale of the project team.

The project manager is responsible for solving the politics inside a project team, he can use the support of the issues management processes to get these issues resolved. But things get worse if the influence is from outside the project team, and from a position of power.

Here, what one can do is, getting his work done on time; get the buy-in from the stakeholders. These will provide you the support needed for your existence in the organization, or the best way is without fighting, leave the organization. But, I strongly believe the project managers are born to fight !

Free Management training

Opus Communications is providing free management training online. They call it as 'Training people like to take'. They also have custom training for corporates.

I very found of their "coaching for performance" training, simple; yet effective. If you are interested visit them at Opus Communications

Success? Failure!

Deciding whether a project is a success or failure is a tricky business. Because, this goes inline with the definition of project stakeholders quote PMBOK ' who is positively or negatively affected by the outcome of the project'. Delivering the project under budget, on schedule covering the agreed scope will be the success criteria for a project manager. The project achieving the business objective will be the success to the project sponsor.

But for project team member, the success will be the completion of the task assigned to him or the incentive he will receive after completing the task well ahead.

If you are working for an external client, from the senior management perspective, the success will be building a working relationship and getting more contracts.

Now, let us see the other side, for another group of stakeholders, your competitors, for them the failure of your project will mean success to them. You fail to market a product; you lost a deal with a Fortune 500 client.

OK, what is the best way to do now? ‘Define project success criteria’. Defining success in your project will help you to understand stakeholder expectations. Moreover this will help to avoid multiple interpretations of the projects results.

Scrum and daily scrum meetings

After my investigations on the methodologies, one particular one attracted me due to its compatibility with my organizational culture - SCURM.

The word ‘scrum’ is taken from the game of rugby where the word means, team members come together in a compact formation to move the ball down the field. The same principles of teamwork of scrum can be used for great success in our project meetings.

So this post I want to talk about the daily scrum meetings. The short, daily scrum meeting is to keep the teams on track and to help the team members get their work done. Often managers are invited to the scrum meetings but they listen rather than speak.

Rules for Scrum meetings.

• Choose a scrum leader to enforce the rules during the sprint

• Hold scrums every day in the same location and at the same time - preferably first thing in the morning
• Each scrum should last only 15 to 30 minutes
• Ask all participants the same three questions: What did you do since the last scrum? What are you going to do between now and the next scrum? Is anything in the way of you doing your work?
• Address issues other than the three questions outside the scrum – this includes suggestions for a team member who's hit a roadblock
• Managers are not allowed to speak
• If a manager or colleague assigns unplanned work to a team member that will throw the team's schedule off track, the scrum leader has the power to excuse the person of the additional work. The work must either be fit into the next sprint or be assigned to someone who's not on the team.
• Your team must have a concrete deliverable for management after the sprint
• Start the process again after each sprint

Meeting Management

PMI says, 90% of a project manager's time is spend for communication. Meetings are an integral part of project communications. Are you worried about improving your meeting management skills?

A few tips are listed below:

• Make every meeting matter - or don't meet at all. Because time is important and if the communication is only one-way no need to meet at all. A status report or an email will be enough.

• Meetings are not good for 1. Updates 2. Getting slackers on track 3. Getting everyone in your page 4. Whipping up enthusiasm.

• Define goals and distribute an agenda.
  

• Job for Meeting attendees. Good way to engage co-workers who otherwise stare out of the window or start snoring ! to name a few. E.g. Meeting Time keeper, Note taker

• Own your meeting. Good meeting shows your leadership skills, so make sure that you want to make the discussion timely, useful and relevant.

• Make it a meeting of the minds. Make sure every one is heard and get the constructive input you need from everyone present.

• Close with a plan of action. Everyone should leave knowing what's expected out of them and when.

I found this useful information from the BNet article on 'How to run effective meetings'

MS Project Certification

Microsoft rolled out MS Project certification ( IT Professional Exam 70-632) . The areas covered in the exam are,

• Configuring Tools and Options (13 percent)
• 
  
• Setting Up a Project (10 percent)
• 
  
• Estimating, Scheduling, and Budgeting Tasks (29 percent)
• 
  
• Resourcing Project Plans (24 percent)
• 
  
• Updating and Reporting on Project Performance (24 percent)

The exam is for Microsoft Project 2007 Standard or Professional desktop versions.

More details can be found at Preparation guide for exam 70-632

Getting PMP PDUs

Are you a PMP? Looking to add PDUs to you account?

Listen to Project Management Podcast's episode on getting PDUs.

Off shore Agile development

Todays post is on Agile for off shore projects. As all know employing agile for a global team is not alwys easy, colocation is one of the home grounds for Agile.

Antony Heath in his article "Managing Agile Projects off shore" lists the below operational aspects for managing your agile off shore projects ( with respect to Scrum).

1. Choose a Scrum Champion
2. Reduce Dependencies of Scrum Teams
3. Promote Team Building
4. Schedule Regular Interaction
5. Conduct Daily Scrum Meetings
6. Emphasise Information Sharing among Teams
7. Split the Project Planning Exercise into Two Sessions
8. Manage Builds and Configurations
9. Minimize Sprint Backlog
10. Adhere to Standards

Agile Methodology

Agile project management is building working software where people can get hands on very quickly rather than spending time on initial documentation / specifications.

Agile focuses on rapid iteration, with as much as customer inputs along the ways as possible.The Waterfall develop in layers where are Agile develops end-to-end functional slices.

The agile is considered as an adaptive methodology where changes are always welcomed and adapting quickly to the changing realities.
Waterfall is a predictive methodology, planning the future in detail. These projects have difficulty in changing direction. – They are inside a change control board where only the most valuable changes are considered

For predictive the success is measured - a project's on-time and on-cost is considered to be a success.

But in agile the question is business value - did the customer get software that's more valuable to them. Working software is the principal measure of progress.

Agile Home Ground

• Low criticality
• Sr Developers - trust among the team
• Requirements changes very often
• Small number of developers

The commonly used agile methodologies are,

• XP
• Scrum
• Crystal
• DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development Methodology)
• RAD
• Lean development
• Feature Driven Development
  

Waterfall methodology

As I told you yesterday, now I am working on the methodology stuff and investigating which one is right for my company.

I prepared a note on the classic, predictive, rigid waterfall methodology and it is given below. This is based on my point of view on the methodology and may vary from yours!



























Waterfall methodology is like a production line. Here, strict controls are placed on the deviations from the plan; to ensure what is produced is what was designed. The positive side of this approach is, it is supremely logical; think before you build, follow a plan, and keep everything organized as possible.

And the flipside is, this approach requires all good ideas come at the beginning of the SDLC where they can be incorporated into the plan/design – almost impossible!

This approach hinders innovation, project managers often try to categories the new ideas as scope creep and believe their job is to save the project from changes !
Since this is a resitance process it results in low quality mediocre products. The product will be only as good as the initial idea, not the best.

Home ground for waterfall / plan driven development methodology is

• High criticality of the work

• Jr developers as the project team

• Low requirements change

• Large no of developers and co-location is not easy

• Culture that demands order

പ്രോജെക്റ്റ്‌ മെതൊഡൊള്‍ജി (Project Methodology)

കമ്പനിക്കൊരു മെതൊഡൊളോജി വെണം. ആത്‌ അജെയില്‍(Agile) വെണൊ അതൊ വാട്ടര്‍ഫാല്‍(Waterfall) മതിയോ അതുമല്ലെകില്‍ ഒരു കൊമ്പിനെഷന്‍ (Combination) വെണമൊ എന്നതാണു ചിന്ത. ഈനി കുറചു കാലം വര്‍തമാനം അതാകാം

ജഗജീത്‌ സിംഗ്‌ ഗസലുകള്‍

മനസ്‌ പ്രക്ഷുബ്ദ്‌ മാകുമ്പൊള്‍, ഈപ്പൊള്‍ സുഖം തൊന്നുന്നത്‌ ജഗജീത്‌ സിംഗിന്റെ ഗസലുകള്‍ കേള്‍ക്കുപൊഴാണു. Thanks to www.musicindiaonline.com

വേളിപാട്‌

ഈ കഴിഞ്ഞ ആഴ്ച നസീര്‍ "എന്താ എപ്പൊള്‍ എഴുത്ത്‌ നിര്‍തിയൊ' എന്നു ചൊദിചപ്പൊഴാണു അന്താ ഒരു ബ്ലൊഗ്‌ തുദങ്ങിയല്‍ - എന്നു തൊന്നിയതു. ഈ എഡിറ്റര്‍ ഒക്കെ ഉണ്ടായാലും... ഈതു ചെറ്രി യ പണി ത്ന്നെ

ഉച്ചപ്പൊതി

കമ്പനിയില്‍ പുതിയ കഫട്ടെരിയ വന്നതില്‍ പിന്നെ വീട്ടില്‍ നിന്നായി ഉച്ച ഭക്ഷനം. ഭക്ഷനം കഴിച്ച്‌ പാത്രം കഴുകാനാനു പ്രയാസം. അതിനാല്‍ വാമഭാഗതിന്റെ ഉതതരവുണ്ടയി..... കമ്പനിയില്‍ നിന്നെതി പാത്രം കഴുകിയാല്‍ മതി

വേനല്‍ മഴ

വെനല്‍ ചൂദിനെ തനുപ്പിക്കാന്‍ മഴ എത്തി. എന്തൊരു ചൂദ്‌ എന്നു പരഞ്ഞവര്‍ ഈനി മഴകരനം ഒന്നും നദക്കുന്നില്ല എന്നു പരയും. ഈ കഴിഞ്ഞ ആഴ്ച തിരുവനന്തപുരത്ത്‌ 38 സെല്‍ഷ്യസ്‌ ആന്ന് താപനില രേഖപ്പെട്ടുത്തിയത്‌.