Mantra for Entrepreneurial Project Management

Subhajit BhattacharyaIT Project Delivery ManagerAccenture

Concept Prototyping on PMAAS Suite (CPOPS)

Theme: National Conference

Sub-Theme: Mantra for Entrepreneurial Project Management

Keywords: Prototype model as managed services, Cloud Service

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Abstract

Concept Prototyping on PMAAS Suite (CPOPS) is a holistic approach wherein the product or service

concept is prototyped on the PMAAS (Project Management as a Service) framework. The objective

behind this approach is to leverage the entrepreneurial thought from concept to implementation by

prototyping the deliverables and managing them in a cost effective manner with minimal risk.

Usually entrepreneurs have to cover a number of milestones to bring their ideas into actual

implementation in the live environment. Each of these milestones can be termed as the phases. The

tasks defined within them are the process groups of project management life cycle. Together they

represent storyboards.

These tasks are further clubbed into agile framework wherein strategic iterated waterfall model is

implemented to handle the challenges and risks in a flip-flop notion. These loosely coupled tasks can

continuously communicate among themselves over a standard service architecture model to keep the

phases running optimally and to yield correct result on completion. The most attractive thing is their

independent cloud based agile nature.If a task goes wrong, we can plug it out and plug-in another task

into the cloud socket without affecting the overall process framework.

As an entrepreneur, setting up an internal PMO is comparatively costly affair and therefore CPOPS suite

can be an alternative approach to enhance overall productivity.

This helps an entrepreneur to focus on the actual deliverable and can effectively manage independent

PM stuffs in the cost effective manner by having periodic customized burn down reports for making

business decisions.

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Contents

1. Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 3

2. Why CPOPS & its origin...................................................................................................................... 4

3. HealthCare.gov failed despite agile practices – A Case Study............................................................8

4. Key Challenges.................................................................................................................................... 9

5. Methodology/process followed...........................................................................................................10

6. Critical success factor........................................................................................................................ 12

7. Quantified benefits to business..........................................................................................................12

8. Lessons learnt................................................................................................................................... 13

9. Conclusion......................................................................................................................................... 14

10. References.................................................................................................................................... 14

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1. Introduction

Concept Prototyping on PMAAS Suite (CPOPS) is a holistic approach wherein the product or service

concept is prototyped on the PMAAS (Project Management as a Service) framework.

This approach can leverage the entrepreneurial thought from concept to implementation by prototyping

the deliverables and managing them on a cost effective manner with minimal risk.

While developing a new product or introducing a novel service, entrepreneurs have to prepare a plan with

a number of milestones to bring their ideas from concept to actual implementation in the live environment.

Due to the complexities and lack of in-house skilled project management team or budget constraint, often

it becomes difficult and unmanageable to yield a successful result. To cope up with this situation, CPOP

model has been introduced.

CPOP intelligently manages each project phase as an autonomous project which can be dealt

withdistinctive cloud consultants. At the core, each project phase follows a prototype model, wherein

progressive iteration happens on the basis of user feedback on partial delivery till the final product or

service isdelivered.

To further manage the phases, they are wrapped over an agile framework wherein tasks under each

phase along with the process groups are clubbed strategically to form a story board and further they are

decomposed into sub-tasks called story points which are assigned attainable scope and timeline. Being

agile in nature, each of the phases can be reviewed and managed closely by the project manager or the

entrepreneur. To make this approach more strategic, a hybrid development model has been

implantedover the sub-tasks. This enables better problem analysis and decision making capabilities.

Each of the phases is loosely coupled with others. They continuously communicate among themselves

and transfer information to their subsequent phases. A cloud based service oriented architecture acts as

a backbone to make these phases operational.

These tasks are further clubbed into agile framework wherein strategic iterated waterfall model is

implemented to handle the challenges and risks in a flip-flop notion. These loosely coupled tasks can

continuously communicate among themselves over a standard service oriented architecture model to

keep the phases running optimally and synchronized on a common platform. The most attractive thing is

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their independent cloud based agile nature, if any sub-taskhas to be deprioritized, we can plug it out and

plugin the required one in the cloud socket without affecting the overall process framework.

This approach can accelerate overall productivity and higher ROI.This also helps an entrepreneur or

organization to focus on the actual deliverable without much focusing onto the project management and

development activities. Hence it gives a flavor of abstraction along with virtualization.

2. Why CPOPS & its origin

Due to emergence of new technologies and hugecompetitionfor survival in the global market, today

companies and entrepreneurs are coming up with innovative service lines and products to serve existing

and prospective clients with the state of the art solutions. However due to lack of in-house project

management capability or other constraint, they often face challenges to make their concept operational

into the live environment. Often they opt for “Proof of Concept” model to gather user feedback and to

further improve the product/service but due to missing standard protocols and huge competition, it

becomes difficult to incorporate user feedback to release the final product in the limited timeframe.

Sometimes to gain more focus, companies/entrepreneurs try to incorporate some leading features into

one solution. However due to lack of marketing and branding teams, these are not promoted and

evaluated correctly by the end users and they continue with the product for which they have developed

certain comfort zone and therefore the new product does not receive an overwhelming response.

To overcome this situation, CPOP suite has been introduced. It primarily works on four principles:

1. Holistic project management over PMAAS framework

2. Project driven on agile platform, however each of the project components follows iterated

waterfall model inside to produce a quality solution

3. Project development follows prototype model until final delivery

4. During the project development cycle, market research bodies continuously feed knowledge data

to CPOP model, so that end solution should be user friendly and pioneering in the global context

The key behind the CPOP framework is to bring down the project management and development

complexityto enable the entrepreneur or the organization to primarily focus ontheir line of

businesses,while project management component is managed by cloud consultants. Each of the phases

follows the agile model to further decompose the tasks into manageable sub-task components also called

story points. In turn each story pointfollows iterated waterfall model inside to further clarify and purify the

requirements to harvest quality deliverables.

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Entrepreneur or project manager can closely monitor each of the phases along with the cloud consultants

to keep track on the progress and can make expert decisions to produce a world class solution.

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Fig 2.1: In the above CPOP framework, we can see there are three major layers. PMAAS suite

works at the top which takes care of each of the phases and identifies the tasks and prepares the

deliverables. To get the tasks scheduled for delivery, phases are further considered as

autonomous projects which follows hybrid model fusing prototype and waterfall models to better

analyze the requirements and plan the deliverablesas sub-tasks.

CPOP is ideally driven by Market Researchers who constantly feed information to the cloud

consultants to prepare a strategic plan to get the product/service a firm recognition among the

users.

Each phase is wrapped over an agile model; therefore it follows the agile principle to decompose

the tasks into manageable sub-taskcomponents or story points and assigned attainablescope and

timeline. A daily review is performed until the release of the actual deliverable.

Project manager performs an interfacing role between internal and external stakeholders and

communicates relevant information.

Most importantly each phase sprint has a distinct set of tasks which are executed on a prototype

model wrapped over an agile suite. Therefore incase the entrepreneur or the project manager

wantsto re-prioritize the task as per the given requirement or business need, then it can very well

be plugged out and the required one can be plugged in. This is managed in the second layer.

Once the components are released, it goes through strategic marketing team who ensures

marketing and branding of the product in the global market.

CPOP suite enables virtualization and scalability on demand basis.

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Fig 2.2: In CPOP model, project requirements are decomposed into tasks and tasks are further

decomposed into sub-tasks which can very well be prioritized and plugged-in and plugged-out

into the cloud based project development and management socket. This behavior enables the

program manager to make optimal decision on need basis.

3. HealthCare.gov failed despite agile practices– A Case Study(Source:http://gcn.com/blogs/reality-check/2013/11/healthcare-agile.aspx)

Many websites including the New Yorker, Washington Post and MedCity News have declared that

HealthCare.gov would not have failed if it had just used “modern” software practices, called agile

development model, just like commercial companies do.

In contrary agile model was implementedwhile developing HealthCare.gov project as the developers have

defined sprints, user stories and incremental test plans — all these are essentially trademarks of an agile

process. A sprint is a fixed duration of time (normally a fortnight) where specific work is completed. A user

story is a short description of a feature from the end-user’s perspective that follows this template: “As a

<type of user> I want <to perform some task> so that I can <achieve some goal/benefit/value>”.

The bottom line is that those people, who claimed that all would be well if HealthCare.gov had used an

agile process, are wrong. The reality is that the developers did use agile, and the project failed miserably.

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4. Key Challenges

Although the agile model was incorporated for the development of HealthCare.gov, it was a failure

attempt. Agile is undoubtedly most renowned and successful model to enable planned application

development within given timeframe, however there are other key points that should be taken care of

while managing or developing complex and large projects.

Key challenges due to which the project failed, could be:

Requirements clarification: Due to lack of initial requirement clarification and irregular

reviewapplication could not get success. The objective is to prepare a systems requirement

document and then to further decompose those system requirements into software and hardware

requirements under a matured protocol. This might not have been done properly.

Inappropriate development model: Agile, indeed, is one of the most farfetched development

modelswhichhave simplified the software development and delivery processes; however there

are instances when two or more models might need to be fusedlogically to produce a quality

output. This handshaking was missing in this case.

Insufficient test plan:Precise test plan was not prepared. All the test cases might not have been

consideredwhile drafting the test plans covering unit testing, component testing, system testing,

incremental testing, usability testing, etc.

Inadequate project plan: As the requirements were not clear and the development model was

not viable enough, therefore overall project plan could not bring correct solution. It might happen

that proper due diligence was not done with the key stakeholders prior to kick off the development

activity.

All at one go:Planning to develop and on-board the application in single instance without

measuring the complexities and challenges can lead to a major mishap. Perhaps this is what

happened in this case as well.

Weak project management: There must have been a major dodge in the project management

plan from requirement analysis to prepare the project charter and preparing the final project plan.

Lag in communication among the stakeholders and flawin risk mitigation plan could have led this

project into disaster. Although agile principles were adhered, improper plan and management

could not yield a successful result.

Improper coordination among pre-sales and marketing teams:Pre-sales team plays major

role while identifying the market requirements and target user segment. Post release marketing

teams help to promote the product and services in the market. If the management team is not

holistically aligned with the respective teams, it can impact overall product sustainability in the

market.

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5. Methodology/process followed

In the above case study, we have found a number ofkey challenges and dependencies behind the failure

of HealthCare.gov. If we try to frame the above scenario underCPOP model and segregate project

manager’s roles, it may bring some quantifiable results.

Here we may figure out belowfive major road blocks:

1) No adequate market research done due to which actual requirements never clarified optimally

2) Targeted to launch the whole application at one shot and therefore inadequate development

model has been chosen

3) Lack of strategic project planning& management

4) No or little due diligence done on the project quality and test plans

5) Lag inalignment with the marketing teams

Perhaps all or most of the above factors contributed in the failure of the HealthCare.gov project.

CPOP framework could haveplayed an important roleto deal with the above scenario:

Market researchers could prepare a knowledge database by rigorous survey in the specific

domain and the usersegments, which further could be shared amongthe cloud consultants,

project manager and senior management team to plan the project more holistically and take

appropriate decisions

Post the requirement clarification, theidentified tasks could be well segregated among different

phases so that project manager and the sponsor could take a decision around “go no-go” stage to

handle any future risks proactively

Since the sub-tasks are themselves part of tasks, they follow the prototype model wherein

rigorous review is done before releasingindividual components

Under each prototype model further waterfall model isimplemented to assure further scrutinizingof

the requirements at micro-level

A proper incremental test plan ensures a bug-free and user friendly product

Project manager has to keep a close eye on the progress therefore each release would go

through strict review and should be signed off by the relevant stakeholders before the actual

release

After each release strategic marketing team can plan the branding and marketing related

activities to reach the target user groups

As market researchers, cloud consultants, and project manager work independently,overall

coordination becomes simple and transparent

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Enablement of Integrated Project Management System (IPMS) tool can help project manager

to have a 360 degree view on the progress and take important decisions

As per the requirements tasks can be plugged-in or plugged-out and prioritized accordingly. This

is done in the second layer of the CPOP framework. This is possible as the framework operates

over a hybrid development model. It basically does not affect overall delivery plan.

Fig 5.1: In the above diagram it is depicted how HealthCare.govweb application could be developed

over CPOP framework. Market researchers would have collectedinformation by rigorous survey. Based

on these they share related information to the cloud consultants and the project manager. They further

would analyze the data and get them processed under the CPOP framework.

Once one of the componentsis released, the strategic marketing team would ensure its marketing and

branding in the global market.

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6. Critical success factor

Proper signed off project requirements and scope document

A well planned market research body along with cloud consultants over PMAAS framework

Well defined signed off project plan along with thetasks and associated sub-tasks to enable

phase-wise release

Close vigilance during project management life cycle until the final release

Vigorous communication protocol (preferably a spoke-hub model for daily review and sharing

information) must be defined for project manager as s/he is interfacing the external and internal

stakeholders to manage project affairs

Well stated risk mitigation plan along with detailed test plan for each module to ensure quality

Self-reliant project manager to drive the development process and take vital decisions, as needed

Large set of tasks must ne decomposed into manageable sub-taskcomponents so that they

should easily be planted over agile based prototype model which further undergoes through

waterfall model

Strategic marketing team to ensure marketing and branding of the released product in the global

market

7. Quantified benefits to business

SMART project management during the overall project lifecycle in contrary to the traditional

approach

Inclusion of PMAASframework can produce a better result even though there is no in-house

project management consultants or PMO setup

As the project items are decomposed into independent sub-task components, managing them is

comparatively simplerwithout having a complex plan

A hybrid development model ensures quality product ensuring user satisfaction

Strategic release of the application maybringhigher RoI

As the components will keep releasing in a definite time interval, it will enable the product/service

retentionin the market

Organization can keep focusing on its major line of businesses while the project work will be done

over a cloud, as a service broker inside a holistic project life cycle management grid

Project manager gets a clear visibility of the estimated and actual cost to avoid over-expenditure

and keep the profitability of the company at par

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With the help of market researcher, organization can very well figure out the priority items and get

them scheduled first to bring better KPI

With the help of strategic marketing team, after each release company can make sure for its

holistic marketing and branding to cover a large set of users

Forecasting risk and preparing mitigation plan becomes easy as multiple units are logically

working together for the common goal and at the same time they are loosely coupled.

As each of the tasks are working as an independent unit under an agile based development

model, in case of any risk or other prioritization issue the task can be plugged out and the

relevant task can be plugged in to produce high end quality output

As the project management and development are done over cloud, it gives an essence of

scalability assuring that further development of the product can further be scaled.It also gives a

platform for virtualization, wherein we get a virtual interface managed by the cloud consultants to

manage the IT need from project management and development perspective.Overall it gives an

essence of abstraction by hiding acute technical/functional details and serving project manager or

entrepreneur with the required information.

8. Lessons learnt

Large projects can be made manageable by decomposing them into smaller project components

To introduce a new or improved product or service in the market, well planned market research

should be performed to understand the current trend and figure out the target customer/user

segmentfor critical business decisions

It is not always feasible or recommended to have an in-house project consultants or PMO

therefore opting PMAAS (Project Management as a Service) can be an alternative way to yield a

better solution

PMAAS framework wrapped over a hybrid solution development approach can give

anoverwhelming success

Before releasing each component, project manager should have a thorough review along with the

cloud consultants and the entrepreneur or the relevant stakeholders

Once the component is released, so the strategic marketing team should prepare a holistic plan

to market and brand the product or newer version of the product in the global market

If the phases are tied over the IPMS tool, can serve a vital role in decision making

As the project components are managed independently under a hybrid model, in case of any risk

or threats they can easily be plugged out and other component can be plugged in without

affecting overall project development

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Project manager is interfacing all the stakeholders in a 360 degree manner and plays vital role in

communication among internal and external stakeholders.

CPOP framework enables virtualization and scalability to adopt additional requirements

dynamically without incurring much expense. Also it provides a high level of abstraction.

9. Conclusion

Concept Prototyping on PMAAS Suite (CPOPS) is a holistic approach wherein the product or service

concept is prototyped on the PMAAS framework. This initiative has been taken for building an

entrepreneurial project management capability. Having an in-house project consultants and PMO may not

be feasible all the time; therefore alternatively we can engage cloud consultants over PMAAS suite to

independently manage each of the phases as an autonomous project. Each project is further divided into

sub-taskscomponents which are further processed under a hybrid development model. Prior to identifying

the tasks, a rigorous market research is performed to gather knowledge database. These are further

analyzed by the project manager or the entrepreneur. With the strategic coordination with loosely coupled

internal and external stakeholders, project manager ensures a quality delivery in a cost effective manner

without slippage in the deadline.

10. References

1. James Shore,”The Art of Agile Development”, O'Reilly, 2008

2. Craig Larman,“Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide”, Addison-Wesley

Professional, 2013

3. Scott Berkun,”The Art of Project Management”, O'Reilly, 2013

4. http://gcn.com/blogs/reality-check/2013/11/healthcare-agile.aspx

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