RAID based approach for efficient Project Management in a pragmatic way towards outstanding Project delivery.

6th Annual Conference on Project Management Leadership

Authors

Phanindra Kishore DBV Email: phanindrakishore.s@avacorp.biz

AVACorp Technologies Pvt. Ltd

East West Center, 3rd & 4th Floor,#128, Nelson Manickam Road,

Aminjikarai,Chennai - 600 029

Phone: +91-44-23741122

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Abstract:

Now a day’s delivering projects within the planned budget, timeline and expected quality

levels is very critical to projects success. To attain this, project managers need to focus

on different aspects of planning considering the technology constrains and the niche

demands of high transforming needs of end customers. Though we follow different life

cycle based approaches from inception to transition (in terms of project management

terminology from initiation to closure), proper risk based project management

assessment at each stage of project life cycle will help in streamlining the delivery.

Ultimately project managers can overcome issues related to budget overruns, schedule

overruns at the same time they can meet the set quality standards.

Forrester suggest in one of their reports as “Strong project managers view risk

management as an important tool that enables them to see the road ahead and remove

molehills before they become mountains”. Here in this paper it deals with the pragmatic

ways of assessing risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies in each phase of project

management or project life cycle from requirements to planning, execution, monitoring

and control, metrics analysis with proper corrective actions and action items.

This strategic approach is generic and scalable to any type of project engagements.

Using this approach from down to higher management predictability in terms of projects

health in terms of delivery, timeline, cost, change and scope can be controlled in an

efficient manner.

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Introduction:

The current scenario in the industry with the transforming needs of high end business

solutions and demanding customer expectations require proper tracking and efficient

project management process. Considering the planning aspects of project, to cater the

current industry demands project managers equally need to give importance to RAID’s

i.e. focus should be given to identification, tracking and managing the risks, assumptions,

issues and dependencies. Most of the projects fail to deliver with expected quality by

meeting the cost considerations because mainly project managers concentrate on art

part of project management aspects by delegating the planning aspects, technical

aspects of project items to other stake holders. Ultimately all these management faults

will lead to increase in dependencies and then finally lead to risk in handling the project

delivery.

There is a paradigm shift in the management of projects as many of the firms, especially

in the Information systems and new product development firms, move from just

managing the projects to risk based project management style. This shift is bringing

constructive change to the way that projects are selected, how they are managed, and

how the firms are organized to bring direction, structure, and oversight to the processes.

This risk based project management style (RAID based model) had helped the firms to

build portfolios of the most beneficial projects, increasing value, reducing resource

demand, and assuring alignment with strategies. The new processes are enhanced by

the availability of specialized computer-based systems that have been designed and

optimized to address the issues of project selection and portfolio maintenance, and to

communicate effectively with the Project Management Office (PMO), corporate

executives, and other stakeholders, leading to vastly improved governance with proper

risk treatment methods.

Also now a day’s every customer expects delivery in agile form i.e. quick requirements,

design, coding, testing and implementations with faster delivery. But on the other side of

age old situation even now “Too many organizations are attempting to adopt new

technologies while retaining older ways of doing things”. In the case of PPM, we

see organizations attempting to expand their project lifecycle to embrace the “idea-to-

benefit” with the manta of RAID’s. They are adopting structured methods to remove

politics from project selection and to build portfolios that contain projects that are fully

aligned with strategies, maximize benefits and ROI, consider and contain risk, and make

the most efficient use of limited resources. They are improving methods, efficiencies and

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communications regarding the execution of projects within the portfolios with proper risk

assessment.

The following paragraphs in this white paper deals with the strategic ways to adopt the

risk based management style from project initiation to project closure covering the

project life cycle approach from inception to implementation and support. Also it vastly

reduces the potential for project failure by placing greater discipline.

With this approach traditional way of managing triple constraint i.e. scope, cost and time

can be managed effective way by knowing the projects health at proper intervals of

project life cycle by means of effective tracking of risks, issues, assumptions and

dependencies. Also meaningful metrics analysis in line with the RAID process will help

projects delivery to success.

If you truly believe (as I do) that building a capability of managing RAID’s in entire project

duration will have a big pay-off for your business, then investing in software that will help

you to build that capability is easy to justify. Updating your system of tools, with a robust

IPM engine with risk enablement at the core of a full-featured, integrated system, in

support of enhanced PPM practices, enthusiastically embraced and promoted by an

enlightened executive, is the ticket to success.

Before we go detail into the process first we will focus on gaining some insights about our RAID terminology:

RISK: An event that could cause loss or threaten the success (cost, schedule, technical,

quality of the software products and Project team morale) of project.

A general definition of project risk is “an uncertainty that can have a negative effect on

meeting project objectives “

Assumption: An Assumption is a decision made with an element of uncertainty.

Issue: An Issue is a situation which is currently impacting the project.

Dependency: A Dependency is a planned situation or event which cannot take place

before a prior situation or event has been completed

Below is the RAID life cycle diagram which depicts the conversion of each attribute to

Issue if we do not track them in a proper way.

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The Assumptions or dependencies arrived at the time of project planning and different

phases of project execution will convert to risk and issues in the course of project

execution. All these four attributes may interchange their position if a project manager

doesn’t track them properly.

Risk based assessment model in line with our project management disciplines and project life cycle:

Here now we will discuss the pragmatic ways of handling the risks, issues, assumptions

and dependencies in project life cycle along with the project management process areas.

Below is the model alignment diagram with RAID process.

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1. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Discover Phase and

Project Initiation process area:

During the presales time and project initiation phase project managers need to

identify, capture and asses the dependencies to execute the project in terms of its

technical complexity, environmental factors, resource loading factors, Training

considerations. Based on these factors planning and estimations based on the

scope need to be provided, hence the maximum risk in executing the project will

be covered in initial phases itself.

Also it is very important to tailor the process and identify the relevant goals based

on the project type. At the same time gathering the past history of similar

engagements wrt risks, estimations will provide more insight and eliminates the

risk.

Proper requirement management at this phase is very helpful for other project

phases, base lining the scope and maintaining the bi directional traceability with

risk assessment approach will ease the requirement management process.

Metrics related to requirements will ensure the health of the project.

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Early identification and involvement of relevant stake holders will save time and

can eliminate major risks in project execution.

Hence identifying the relevant RAID’s in project discover phase will give more

clarity in terms of managing the projects triple constraint i.e. scope, cost and

time.

2. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Define Phase and

Project Planning process area:

During this phase project managers need to involve in all the planning aspects of

project right from identifying the resources, loading and capacity planning,

communication plan, identifying and defining the project charter, requirements

management plan, acceptance plan etc.

Also project related goals like metrics, tailoring the process needs based on

project type and kick off meetings need to be planned for project initiation.

Hence as part of this RAID attributes relevant to those project phases need to be

captured and tracked to manage the project to the right direction. These are all

can tracked through and internal IPM tool for better results.

3. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Design Phase and

Project execution process area:

During this phase project manager need to define a proper engineering rigour to

meet the entry and exit criteria for each of design considerations right from

designing the DB, Application, data flows and defining the architecture and

defining, designing the QC strategy to meet the quality expectations. Also at this

phase project manager need to identify the tools and techniques need to be used

along with the technical team to cater the needs of future project execution.

Proper control and checks need to be established wrt IP violations and

maintaining the IP registers etc with proper RAID tracking process. Risks related

to these processes need to be assessed and tracked to closure for better project

delivery.

Also ensuring the quality gates with proper unit testing, code reviews will ensure

the build stability. Risks related to these need to be tracked and closed along with

action items in IPM.

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4. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Development Phase

and Project monitoring and control process area:

This is the crucial phase of project delivery; here in this phase handling risks and

managing the other attributes are very important for any projects success. Hence

project managers need to be more focussed on ensuring the build management,

ensuring the proper reviews and change tracking. Also change requests

management with proper impact analysis with risk treatment mechanisms will

help in efficient project delivery.

Also during this phase to avoid the risks and sudden surprises in delivery slippage,

adhering to schedules, cost overruns etc. Project Managers need to focus on

phase end audits, which will help in knowing the project health in a predictable

way also maintaining the project health profile along with meaningful metrics will

eliminate risks in delay in delivery.

Tracking the RIAD’s along with the proper action items to closure will ensure

meeting the timelines.

5. Pragmatic way of RAID tracking considerations at Deployment Phase and

Project Closure process area:

During this phase project managers need to give utmost importance to meeting

the quality objectives by risk tracking the deliverables related to UAT, acceptance

criteria, client expectations and Non functional requirements.

Also project managers need to assess the lessons learnt, best practices followed

along with the facts of what went wrong and what went well. This will help in

mitigating the risks in managing the similar projects in future.

Project Closure need to be prepared by focusing on closing the open risks, so that

issues will be tracked to closure.

By appropriately following the above said five strategic thumb rules along with

proper RAID assessment, any type of project portfolios definitely is able to deliver

with greater quality by meeting the customer expectations and budget

considerations with greater ROI, which is the success path to repeat business and

new client wins to the organizations.

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RAID as a bridge to PM and Project Life cycle:

Now a day’s in the fast paced delivery models like agile and scrum processes the

expectations from all aspects of project criteria wrt quality, development methodology

and delivery is very high. To meet this niche demanding needs of customers RAID

assessment approach acts as bridge in eliminating the risks in operations and project

portfolio management.

Below is the sample example for the above listed facts:

From the above we can conclude that by means of effective usage of RAID model,

projects can be controlled and mitigated both from operations to project portfolio

management and vice versa. The ultimate goal of the project success is to gain margins

which is a visible factor through what if analysis or cost margin analysis.

Schedule, timeline slippages are managed through proper tracking of effort variance and

schedule variance; these can be compared against operations goals defined at initial

stages of project.

Risk identification, assessment process:

To meet the objectives and pragmatic ways defined above each project manager must

the know the techniques of identifying the risks then only the next process levels of

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defining the risk strategy, risk assessment, risk mitigation (Contingency), risk reporting

can be done effectively.

Generally the risk identification techniques are from the kick off meetings, team

meetings, past Organization risk registers, project symptoms which are likely to damage

the assets or deviate timelines etc are of sample indicators. One most important view

point is most of the project teams had false impression that only leads and project

managers can raise and identify risks, which is false myth. Every project stake holder has

right to raise or identify a risk.

Once the identification process is over project managers need to come up with the

categorizing the risks based on the impact and probability of occurrence, from this risk

exposure index can be calculated. In general risks of REI greater than or equal to 12

need to be escalated and discussed in account calls or delivery review calls.

As this is most general methodology in general most of the project managers know, just

provided high level view points for risk identification and assessment.

Best practices need to be followed for effective project delivery with RAID model:

Below are some of the best practices which will help in smooth project delivery:

Listing and identifying the risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies related to

scope management, estimations and planning.

Managing and identifying the resource level dependencies at the initial phases of

engagement will help in better capacity planning, thus buffer management is nil.

Identify, tailor and define the objectives and goals in the process at the beginning

of the project, hence tracking of the relevant project artifacts will not become

over head to the project manager.

Track, assess, manage and close the RAID through an IPM tool with proper

analysis and corrective actions which will help in identifying the root cause of the

problem, thus precious project time will be saved in doing the impact analysis

later.

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Timely audits, health checks, quality gates, IP compliance registers will make risk

free in paying penalties to the customers.

Ensuring the checklists for reusability and frameworks based models will save

time, this need to be planned initially itself to save the project time.

Capturing the meaningful metrics and its analysis will help in predicting the

project health through which major risks in slippages of timeline, quality, on time

delivery and high customer satisfaction can be achieve d. Hence project

managers are alerted to manage the risks at earlier.

Conclusion:

As Forrester suggests in one of their reports as “Strong project managers view risk

management as an important tool that enables them to see the road ahead and remove

molehills before they become mountains”. Hence RAID based project management

approach will ensure on time project delivery by meeting the customer expectations and

projects can be delivered within the budget considerations.

The pragmatic approach defined in above white paper will ease project managers,

account managers and program managers manage their project portfolios effectively by

eliminating the risks involved in executing the all project engagements. As this is simple,

easy and effective industry standard approach, using which projects of all categories can

be rolled out easily and can see the results of success in shorter span of time.

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