Key Points

1. Key focus areas for business, operations context
   1. people, practice, processes, projects, performance, plans 
2.  Simplify deliverables, scope to focus on high value, low cost, low risk features for the target clients.
3. Follow 3B sourcing model: reuse existing solutions, services from your organization and enterprise open source solutions first before moving to buy or build.
4. Before starting to create the solution, ensure you have engagement, participation and commitment from a valid sample of potential clients in the solution process. They will keep the project focused on value they can use quickly

References

Key Concepts

Management in a business context includes:

• people,
• practice,
• processes
• projects
• performance
• plans

General Job Interview Questions

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hiring manager questions to ask
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1. how do you describe the team working environment / culture now?
2. how do team members rate their experience here?
3. what was a gratifying milestone to achieve?
4. what do employees say about you?
5. how did you handle a challenge where the deliverable couldn't wasn't met?
6. what impact does this team have on long-term growth, retention, profits?
7. what are the key factors that make this team successful?
8. how are employees developed here?
9. what was your biggest failure and how did you react?
10. what have you learned that will impact your value here? vcrs, trust v
11. describe your mgt style? supportive, analytical
12. what was a break through result not quantified? pgp mobi bwc east cgc

Project Mgt Questions

Enterprise PMO Services Model

Project Management

The mission of the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) Project Management Office (PMO) is to establish and maintain strong governance and disciplined project management to ensure a common execution process driven by internal controls that increase project completion success rate. 

Examples of IT projects:

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Project Management Office Objectives

The Project Management Office (PMO) is a strategic functional unit within the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) that promotes and advances consistent Project Management principles and processes for all IT projects.

The objectives of the PMO are to:

• Implement and maintain governance and disciplined project management
• Create internal controls
• Ensure a common execution process
• Provide transparency to project status across the project portfolio

Benefits:

1. Higher project completion success rate – high quality deliverable, on time and on budget
2. Expectation level set: Unilateral project execution roadmap that ensures all projects are executed in the same manner
3. Efficiency: leverage same tools and process for each projects
4. Early problem detection so resolution can be apply before it is too late
5. Portfolio management and better project health visibility

Project Phases and Execution

The PMO ensures the use of project management best practices, including standardized project plans, project schedules, risk plans, and budgets.

When a project is identified, the Project Sponsor and Agency IT Manager present the project for consideration to the Project Review Board (PRB). If the project is approved by the PRB, then a Project Manager will be assigned. The Project Manager is responsible for managing the project at all phases and keeping the scope, budget, timeline, and resources on-track.

Project phases include:

Initiation: Project initiation, project charter, and governance review
Planning and Analysis: Project plan and requirements
Execution: Design, development, testing, and readiness to Go Live
Implementation and Close out: Implementation in production, lessons learned and transfer to operations/maintenance

project-mgt-ebook-2023.pdf link

project-mgt-ebook-2023.pdf file

Chapter 3: The 5 Essential Skills of a Successful Project Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Wield the Politician Inside You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Use the Details to Shape the Strategy . . . . . . . . . . 45

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate . . . . . . 47

Lead by Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Create Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Strategies for Project Success

Well managed projects are always driven by:
key roles ( sponsors, beneficiaries, users etc ), clear use cases, clear objectives, scope, resourcing, system boundaries, stakeholder management and dependency management across all 3 domains: business, project and technical.

In addtion to the listed PM concepts to manage Agile projects:

It's important to understand all stakeholders views on the current solution and their roles and views on the new solution to manage expectations effectively throughout the project.

Prepare for success following the VCRS method ( Value, Costs, Right, Success ) for all stakeholder groups

The common PM concepts all make sense to manage Agile projects:

1. to embrace change in a controlled manner in projects
2. increase learning across teams
3. provide good collaboration opportunities
4. use the sprints as improvement opportunities with plan, deliver, review and retrospective steps

Other considerations to deliver a quality solution:

A few key business solution architecture concepts that apply to the project scope should be reviewed for the key use cases in scope:

1. NFR - what are the key non-functional requirements for the project / solution?
2. RAS - who do you define specific test cases for reliability, service, availability?
3. KPIs - what are the key performance indicators in scope for operations & support of the production solution?
4. tools - does the target production environment provide the right observability, management tools to operate effectively?
5. what is the ongoing change management model for the solution including learning and onboarding new resources?
6. Failure and integration scenarios: ask the right questions on potential failure scenarios and their criticality, frequence using any good data

Potential Value Opportunities

Potential Challenges

Candidate Solutions

Lean Six Sigma - Process Improvement, Waste Reduction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_Six_Sigma#Tools_for_Lean_and_Six_Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is a method that relies on a collaborative team effort to improve performance by systematically removing waste^[1] and reducing variation. It combines lean manufacturing/lean enterprise and Six Sigma to eliminate the eight kinds of waste (muda): Defects, Over-Production, Waiting, Non-Utilized Talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Extra-Processing.

Lean Six Sigma not only reduces process defects and waste, but also provides a framework for overall organizational culture change

Waste factors

Different types of waste have been defined:

• Defects: A defect is a product that is declared unfit for use. This requires the product to either be scrapped or reworked, costing the company time and money. Examples include a product that is scratched during the production process and incorrect assembly of a product due to unclear instruction.
• Over-Production: Over-production refers to product that is made in excess or made before it is needed. Products should be produced as they are needed following the Just-in-time manufacturing philosophy in Lean. Examples include creating unnecessary reports and overproduction of a product before a customer has requested it.
• Waiting: Waiting involves delays in process steps and is split into two different categories: waiting for material and equipment and idle equipment. Examples include waiting for authorization from a superior, waiting for an email response, waiting for material delivery, and slow or faulty equipment.
• Non-Utilized Talent: Non-Utilized Talent refers to the waste of human potential and skill and is the newest addition to the eight wastes. The main cause of this waste is when management is segregated from employees. When this occurs, employees are not given the opportunity to provide feedback and recommendations to managers in order to improve the process flow and production suffers. Examples include poorly trained employees, lack of incentives for employees, and placing employees in jobs or positions that do not utilize all of their knowledge or skill.
• Transportation: Transportation is the unnecessary or excessive movement of materials, product, people, equipment, and tools. Transportation adds no value to the product and can even lead to product damage and defects. Examples include moving product between different functional areas and sending overstocked inventory back to an outlet warehouse.
• Inventory: Inventory refers to an excess in products and materials that aren't yet processed. This is a problem because the product may become obsolete before the customer requires it, storing the inventory costs the company time and money, and the possibility of damage and defects increases over time. Examples include excess finished goods, finished goods that cannot be sold, and broken machines scattered on the manufacturing floor.
• Motion: Motion is unnecessary movement by people. Excessive motion wastes time and increases the chance of injury. Examples include walking to get tools, reaching for materials, and walking to different parts of the manufacturing floor to complete different tasks.
• Extra-Processing: Extra-processing is doing more work than is required or necessary to complete a task. Examples include double-entering data, unnecessary steps in production, unnecessary product customization, and using higher precision equipment than necessary.^[4]

Lean Six Sigma Process

Lean Six Sigma is a synergized managerial concept of Lean and Six Sigma. ^[8]Lean traditionally focuses on the elimination of the eight kinds of waste/Muda classified as defects, over-production, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra-processing. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in (manufacturing and business) processes. Together, Lean aims to achieve continuous flow by tightening the linkages between process steps while Six Sigma focuses on reducing process variation (in all its forms) for the process steps thereby enabling a tightening of those linkages. In short, Lean exposes sources of process variation and Six Sigma aims to reduce that variation enabling a virtuous cycle of iterative improvements towards the goal of continuous flow.

Lean Six Sigma uses the DMAIC phases similar to that of Six Sigma. The five phases include Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control

Customer-driven process change

First, both Lean and Six Sigma stress the fact that the customer defines the value of a product or service. This means that when processes are examined, the importance or necessity of steps in the process should be examined through the eyes of the customer. Also, Lean and Six Sigma utilize process flow maps in order to better understand the flow of production and identify any wastes. Furthermore, both rely on data to determine which areas of production need improvement in efficiency and to measure the success of improvements. Finally, as a result of implementing Lean and Six Sigma, efficiency typically improves and variation decreases. Efficiency and variation go hand-in-hand, with improvement in one resulting in an improvement in the other.

Governance

COBIT - Control Objectives for IT

https://www.simplilearn.com/what-is-cobit-significance-and-framework-rar309-article

It is a framework created by the ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association) for IT governance and management. It was designed to be a supportive tool for managers—and allows bridging the crucial gap between technical issues, business risks, and control requirements. COBIT is a thoroughly recognized guideline that can be applied to any organization in any industry. Overall, COBIT ensures quality, control, and reliability of information systems in an organization, which is also the most important aspect of every modern business.

replicates DMAIC stages ...

• Planning & Organization
• Delivering and Support
• Acquiring & Implementation
• Monitoring & Evaluating

Step-by-step guide for Example

sample code block

Recommended Next Steps

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