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Measure. Improve. Deliver.
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If you could
change one thing about your software development, what would it
be?
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In this issue ..
Management: What Role Does your PMO
have? Go to article
Survey Report on AM/AD. Read
now.
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An emerging Global
definition of Quality
Tue, Nov 30, 2010 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
EST . Quality? What does
it mean? A more complex question than you realize. Often,
organizations define quality in local, tribal terms that can
help but limits valuable comparison to other best practices.
In this brief webinar, David Consulting Group (DCG) provides
an update on CISQ progress and how the outcomes of this
initiative can help organizations improve quality now by
asking the same questions the CISQ community is asking
itself. REGISTER NOW.
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 Are you ready for
the CMMI V1.3 release? What you need to know.
Tue,
Dec 7, 2010 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM EST. The
CMMI V1.3 Release is around the corner and brings significant
changes. If you are already appraised at V1.2 how does this
affect you? If you are planning to implement V1.3 what do you
need to know. Join DCG's Pat Eglin, Certified CMMI Instructor
and Implementation Consultant to hear about what is different
in V1.3 and how this affects your upcoming
re-appraisal. REGISTER NOW.
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 View
DCG Calendar
Upcoming webinars, conferences and events
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Online
and Onsite Courses available now. Learn more.
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CONNECT TO DCG WORLDWIDE.
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 Management: What Role Does your PMO have?
Confessed
faults are half-mended. ~Scottish Proverb
Recent conversations with DCG clients who are often large,
geographically diverse organizations, have focused on improving
the performance of projects and ultimately their programs and
portfolios. This invariably leads us to ask about their Project
Management Office and its function and role in their
organization.
Most of
our clients are successful businesses that really don't need us
all that much...except that sometimes an outside opinion or extra
set of hands or push can shift internal dynamics enough to
initiate real change. Much of our usefulness is in helping them
ask of themselves questions they would normally not ask.
If you
ask an open ended question, "What is your PMO like?"
you tend to get an open-ended answer, which is a good place to
start. However, follow-up question that provides choices
sometimes sharpens the insight and starts a productive
dialog. One question we find particularly diagnostic is,
"What role does your PMO have?"
Conversationally,
it is natural to discuss this question and answers in a
consulting dialog, but hard to do on paper. So for this month's
edition, we tried to distill this question in chart form below.
We hope this sparks some conversations within your organization.
In next month's newsletter, we will discuss this further,
and we welcome feedback if you found this helpful in any way.
Send us a note at info@davidconsultingtgroup.com with
your thoughts.
So then
the question is, "What role does your PMO have: Cop, Coach
or Leader?
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Dimensions
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Cop
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Coach
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Leader
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Planning
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Sets rules and
boundaries
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Provides
goals and
objective
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Suggests
principles
and ideas
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Organizing
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Defines roles and
responsibilities
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Evaluates talent,
move people around
based on skills
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Encourages
positive
group dynamics
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Leading
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Leads
by authority
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Leads
by experience
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Leads
by example
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Controlling,
Influence,
Change Agent
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Slaps hands when
out of bounds
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Practice,
evaluate,
change goals, repeat
cycle
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Warns
of dire
result
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 Is measuring productivity
important for Application Maintenance (AM) and Application
Development (AD)? If not, how else are companies
controlling AM & AD?
Survey Report by Mike Harris, DCG President
Executive Summary
In
October 2010, DCG University (on behalf of the David Consulting
Group - "DCG") contacted IT metrics and performance
improvement practitioners to find out how their company is
controlling Application Maintenance (AM) and Application
Development (AD). This short paper summarizes our
interpretation of the 77 responses received.
Perhaps
not surprisingly, the key findings for AM and AD are
different.
AM,
which should be as close to a statistically predictable
software manufacturing environment as anything in software,
appears to be more often managed according to commercial
realities (of budgets, response times and input hours) than by
scientific approaches to the problem size (such as measured
functional size or number of defects).
For
AD, time to market continues to outweigh productivity as a
priority and, perhaps as a result, setting aggressive schedules
and resource hour targets are the most common ways to drive
productivity. Given this response, it is not surprising
that budget overruns and failed projects continue to
characterize the software development industry.
For
both AM and AD, organizations have significant opportunities to
improve their performance by adopting simple combinations of
commercial aggressiveness with software development risk
management techniques.
For
more information, please contact the author at m.harris@davidconsultinggroup.com.
To receive the complete survey report, please contact Fiona Thompson at 610-644-2856 Ext
21.
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