Project Management Lifecycle Process Capability assessment
Your current challenge
- Your software-related projects fail to meet their objectives more often than not
- Your project sponsors complain that projects take too long, cost too much, and don't return the value and benefits that were expected
- Business is frustrated at the inability of IT to meet deadlines and requirements
- IT complains that Business is unreasonable in their demands and expectations
- There have been several attempts to improve the situation but it seems that not only are results not getting better, they may even be getting worse
The pain
- The level of quality in your Production environment is steadily getting worse
- Critical resources are constantly being diverted to handle Production issues, taking away from your capacity for new projects
- You may be starting to lose customers because these quality problems interfere with your ability to provide satisfactory customer service
The impact
- Projects and systems continually become more complex
- Timelines are constantly becoming more aggressive
- Resources are becoming more and more overloaded
Any of these three factors would make success with software-related projects more difficult. The combination of the three represents a "perfect storm," that will make success almost impossible.
The new approach
Building a better understanding of your capabilities, capacity, and constraints will
- Increase your probability of success with the projects that you decide to undertake
- Allow you to prioritize the projects that represent the greatest value and benefits opportunities
- Enable you to avoid taking on projects that have little to no chance for success because of the unavailability of critical elements (skill, will, capacity, etc.)
- Improve your Production environment quality thereby increasing your capacity for new value-adding work
- Pinpoint the weaknesses in your current methodology so that they can be addressed (strengthening your capability)
- Pinpoint the weaknesses in your current methodology so that they can be managed around (avoiding project failures)
The proof
If you're consistently getting unsatisfactory results from your software-related projects it's because of one of the following reasons:
- Your expectations are too high.
- Your capabilities are too low.
- Your processes are broken or ineffective.
- Some combination of the above.
Until you understand how the above reasons are influencing the results you've been getting with projects you can't improve or manage the situation. The answer is the Project Management Lifecycle Process Capability Assessment.
The assessment is conducted through a questionnaire that is administered to a cross-section of Senior Managers, Business Professionals, and Technology Professionals in your organization who have the most intimate understanding of your Project Management Lifecycle processes, capabilities, and problem areas.
After the questionnaire has been completed the results are tabulated and a 40+ page report is presented that will provide a breakdown of your current strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for improvement as judged by the people who best understand your current challenges - the experts in your organization who deal with those challenges on a daily basis.
The strength of this approach is that when you understand your capabilities, capacity, and constraints you can purposefully choose how to use that information. For example:
- If you discover that you lack capacity given the number of projects you're attempting you can either choose to increase your capacity, or decrease the number of projects you attempt. Either choice will diminish the number of projects that fail due to a lack of capacity.
- If you discover that you lack skills or capabilities in a particular area of expertise you can decide to either strengthen that area through training or hiring, or you can avoid undertaking projects that would depend on that expertise. Once again, either decision leads to more success.
- If you discern that your company doesn't have the organizational will to adopt or change processes that are needed in order to succeed with a new system you can either educate your people or put off the purchase. Either way will avoid the frustration and waste of a failed system because of resistance to new ways of doing work.
As was said earlier, until you understand why you're getting the results you're currently getting you can't improve or manage the situation. The PMLC Process Capability Assessment is the first step toward gaining that understanding and building the capability to manage your projects effectively.
The entire process can be conducted in less than a month.
Price: $2,995 for up to 30 participants
Contact me for more information.