Project Management for GIS Technology
1.3 How to Overcome the Difficulties
There are three important elements necessary to reduce de inherent risks of the difficulties
listed before: have well defined processes, change the people’s mental pattern and implement an
effective project management.
1.3.1 Well Defined Processes
If we are talking about software development, we have several processes involved, like
Software Development Process, Software Configuration Process, Software Quality Process and
Project Management Process. I will return to these processes later, but what is important at this
moment is to know that the quality of the project artifacts is proportional to the level of these
processes definition and their effective usage.
1.3.2 Mental Pattern Changing
The only way to have effective changes in the organization is to change the way people
percept and act with the environment. If we intend to implement a new process, we have to train the
professionals and, better than this, make them participate on the process definition. It will have bad
results if we change the structure, the environment or impose something we believe, if it has no
correspondence with the company’s culture values and credos. We have to have in mind a great
effort with training and involvement of people, in order to reduce the resistance and be successful in
our objective.
1.3.3 Effective Project Management
Another important thing that has to be done is to improve the organization skills to deal with
management tasks in the tactic and operational levels. Nowadays the project management has been seen as a very efficient strategy to deal with the constant changing in our global world. I am not
talking about very big projects like the construction of hydroelectric power plants, but small projects,
in all areas, in all levels. In Technology Information area, Project Management has been very well
considered due to its characteristics. The implementation of Project Management in IT areas is the
solution for schedule, cost and control problems.
1.4 Why Project Management?
The new global world reality demands for companies repositioning and the present
Administration requires strategic and project management policy. The first one establishes the long-term
action lines related to products, market, customers, concurrency, etc. The second is the way to
achieve the established goals. The combination of both generates a synergic effect which conducts,
in a small period, to efficient answers about the intense and constant changes and its consequent
effect in all levels.
The strategic management establishes the reason of the organization, defines the market, the
clients and the products, defines the mission, the vision, the values and designs its general lines
through which the organization will be led.
The Project Management focuses on short term results, allow efficient resource use, uses
multi-disciplinary teams and promotes healthy relationship and professional development to all
members. Project Management could be used to design the units of the company or to implement
strategic actions.
As a resume, we could say that Strategic Management establishes the target and the Project
Management describes how to rich these targets.
1.5 Current Operations and Projects
In the beginning of last century, Taylor defined the Principles of Scientific Administration.
Its basic idea is to identify and implement a formal process in any productive activity. It worked so
well that Taylor is considered the Administration Father. It improved the production and quality of
products, and made it possible to establish controls and measurements. We could call this kind of
administration “current operation management”. It was perfect in the industrial age because in the
last century companies had stable production processes. The changes were exceptions. People
frequently submitted themselves to the “machine world”, forgetting their personality when they were
working. The hierarchy is the right structure to support this model.
In the current operations of a product production, since we have defined its process, the
management activities are important to guarantee the application of the same process in each
production cycle. When the process finishes, it has to restart again. This cycle is applied without
interruption through weeks, months and years. “Specialization” is the key word in this case.
In the “information age” we have to deal with constant changes and, in this scenario, the
scientific administration does not allow a good performance. Today we have to be creative; we have
to face constantly with the new. Today, people are searching for something more than just a survival
salary. In this new world, we have to learn how to survive in a brutal concurrence fighting, we have
not just to react fast, but we have to create opportunities, create new demands, create the future. In
this case, the key work is “creativity” which demands a more flexible structure because hierarchy
does not match very well.
In this new environment, projects are the right response and Project Management is the way
to have things on hand. A process can support the project but it is applied once in the life cycle of the
project. Sometimes a project uses several processes in its life cycle. For example, in the case of software development, we can use the software development process, the configuration process and
the quality control process, all together with the project management process.
2 Project Management
2.1 What is a Project?
It is a temporary enterprise to create a unique product or service. The main word here is
“temporary”. A project always has to start and finish. Some people confuse project with products,
saying “the company project”, or “the software “X” project”. A company or an organization is not a
project itself. We could have a project to create the company, but since it is working, the
implementation project has finished. The same happens with software. There is an initial
development project. The result of this project is the software installed and working (the project
product). Each new version of the software is a new product that must be created by a new project.
If we have an endless project, it is impossible to estimate necessary resources and cost and
this last trend to the infinite.
2.2 What is Project Management?
It is the knowledge, skills and techniques applied to plan, follow and control the activities in
order to supply the needs and the expectations of all parts involved in a project. According to PMI,
Project Management is structured by nine processes, each one responsible for a specific item of the
complete activity set to keep the project on hand. These processes are:
-
“Scope: consider the processes required to ensure that the project includes all the work required,
and only the work required, to complete the project successfully. It is primarily concerned with
defining and controlling what is or is not included in the project.
- : ensure the timely completion of the project, including activity definition, sequencing,
duration estimation, schedule development and control.
- : ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget. Includes resource
planning, cost estimating, budgeting and control.
- : ensure that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It includes all
activities of the overall management function that determine the quality policy, objectives and
responsibilities. It defines the quality planning, assurance and control.
- Resource: make the most effective use of the people involved with the project. Include all
the project stakeholders – sponsors, customers, partners, individual contributors, and others. It
establishes the organizational planning, staff acquisition and team development.
- Communications: ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, dissemination, storage,
and ultimate disposition of project information. Includes communications planning, information
distribution, performance reporting and administrative closure.
- Risk: is the systematic process of identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risk. It
includes maximizing the probability and consequences of positive events and minimizing the
probability and consequences of adverse events to project objectives. It considers risk
management planning, risk identification, qualitative risk analysis, quantitative risk analysis, risk
response planning and risk monitoring and control.
- Procurement: includes the processes required to acquire goods and services, to attain project
scope, from outside the performing organization. Provides an overview of procurement planning,
solicitation planning, solicitation, source selection, contract administration and closeout.
- Integration: includes the processes required to ensure that the various elements of the project are
properly coordinated. It involves project plan development, project plan execution and integrated
change control.” – Source: PMBOK of PMI.
2.3 The Organizational Aspect
The organizational structures have a direct influence in the development of a company
projects. The way the organization is structured defines the way in which the projects are conducted.
This influence can be positive or negative, depending on the kind of projects and their relationship
with the whole organization.
2.3.1 Department and Project Structures
The most common organizational structure is the so-called “functional”. It is defined
according to the diverse specialization found inside the company. It is the perfect structure of the
industrial age where changes were not frequent, but it generates a lot of problems nowadays related
to slowness and inflexibility.
When the organization begins to work with projects, these are born and live inside the
several departments. The main problems of this kind of structure are:
- Communication problems and low decision participation. The communication between
departments, when exists, happens through the department bosses and depends on the ability of these
professionals. Sometimes the inter department communication simply does not occur just because it
is not interesting to their bosses, even when it is absolutely necessary to the smoothly conduction of
a project. Managers are responsible for decisions which are not delegated to others. This situation
causes a sense of discrimination and makes the motivation down.
- Authority, discipline, control and charging: these are the rules. Employees are subjected to
follow orders and to be disciplined. The control is necessary in all levels to guarantee the results
because the professionals are not committed with their activities and with the company’s goals.
- Do not maximize the skills usage: it is extremely difficult to group the right people for a
project because the employees are all inside their departments. To allocate resources for a project,
they have to be considered just inside the department where the project was born. Then it is
necessary to have redundant skills working at the company, doing things completely out of their
main skills.
- Professional growth depends on boss assessment: the only way to be recognized is through
the department boss, then each professional depends on his assessment, and the whole professional
life is subjected to injuries and bad judgements.
A project structure is a functional structure with a department of projects. All the company
projects are executed inside this department. It is the case of engineering companies that have very
big projects. But the problems are the same when the case is small projects inside other departments.
2.3.2 Matrix Structure
In theory, this is the ideal structure for projects. The projects are inserted in a transversal
position related to the departments. This structure allows better results than the functional when we
are working with projects. The necessary worker is allocated to the project and begins to respond to
the project manager in all situations relative to the project subjects. But, his resource manager is the department manager yet. This is the main problem of this kind of structure: loss of management
unity, although there are several advantages:
- Better usage of skills: it allows the allocation of the right resource for each project, identifying
them inside the whole company.
- Authority and power reduced in favor of creativity.
- It demands cultural and paradigms changes. Each employee begins to work for the company
rather than for his department.
3 Processes Definition
This section analyzes how the whole quality process was conducted at COPEL, its steps, all
the defined elements and describes important considerations.
3.1 Processes Definition Strategies
After our experience working with software quality and process definitions, we listed below
the most important strategies to assure good results:
- Organization commitment
It is extremely important to have the commitment of the whole organization to this work. It is a
work of basis, which demands a lot of effort and few results. It is like a building foundation in
which we invest a lot of money and time and the building does not appear. It is important that
the company managers are conscious about the meaning of this job. But as important as the
managers’ commitment, is the involvement of workers. First because it is necessary to take
advantages of the company’s experience and second because it reduces late resistances.
- Quality improvement program responsible
Another key factor is to have a leader of the whole process, someone who is specialized in
software quality process. If the company does not have this specialist, it is necessary to hire a
consultant. In this case, it would be recommended a project manager to respond by the entire
work.
- Define action lines and models to be followed
It is nonsense to start from nothing. There are a lot of defined processes around the world, which
could be used as a model for our job. Therefore, selecting models is the first step. The second is
defining the action lines to be followed. It is important to know where, when and how we want
to go. Since we have established the target and the way to reach it, it is necessary to define some
measurements to assess the progress along the way.
- Formal definition of teams for process elaboration and improvement
This is part of the company’s commitment. If we don’t have formal teams allocated to this job
by the company managers, it would be very difficult to achieve the expected results. The
professionals who are working in this job have to feel themselves committed with it.
- One leader for each group
Once we have established the teams, it is also important to define the leader of each team. This
leader must take more time than the others because he has to organize the information, prepare
the meetings and report the results.
- Week meetings
This was our strategy because people of the organizations who continued to work in their regular
functions formed the teams. Their commitment with the job was four hours a week. We have
achieved the first results after one and a half year. I think it would be better if the teams were isolated during the job. This would improve the stimulation once we would achieve earlier
results.
- Consultant contract can speed the whole process
Fortunately, the leader of the whole job in our company is doctored in software quality process.
Then, he has organized, has conducted the entire work and has oriented the teams. We strongly
recommend contract partial time job of consultants if this resource is not present at the company.
3.2 The Tree Bases of Quality
As the main model of the whole job we elected four processes, which we consider have to
orient all the effort toward the results of a software development projects. These four processes are:
- Software Development Process: this is the main process and is supported by the others. It
defines the products, activities, roles and workflow used to obtain the software developed.
- Project Management Process: defines all the processes necessary to plan and control the project
in order to rich results on schedule and cost.
- Configuration Management Process: defines the rules to manage all the products generated by
the project during the project execution and after the project finishing.
- Quality Control Process: defines the processes necessary to guarantee the project products
quality.
3.3 Origins of The Whole Work
We have started our job searching for the main processes used around the world. We
believed that it would speed a lot our job and it really did. Another premise we have considered was
our internal experience. We believed that trying to change dramatically the internal culture would be
catastrophic.
Then we have established the general lines using the CMMI (Capability Maturity Model) as
the base for Software Quality Process Improvement Program. The other processes derived from this
program. To define the Software Development Process, we have based on RUP (Rational Unified
Process) and on our own experience. To define the Project Management Process we have based on
PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) of PMI (Project Management Institute) and on
our experience.
We could say there is no ideal process that can be used as a model. We have selected those
which seemed the best in our subjective analysis.
3.4 Project Management Process – A Dynamic View
The Project Management Process is no more than a big PDCA (Plan, Do, Check and Act),
used to control a complex set of activities in order to reach a specific result. The basic difference
from a project process and a PDCA is that “planning, execution and control” happen several times
during the project life cycle and once in a PDCA. The four phases of Project Management Process
are listed bellow:
Initialization: this phase defines all the necessary activities to start the project. Are included
in this phase the elaboration of the Project Charter and the commitment establishing of all levels.
Planning: in this phase the Project Manager is allocated and the project plan and the
chronogram are elaborated. In this phase all the necessary internal and external contacts are made
with the future people involved with the execution activities. In this phase the project cost and time
are estimated, risks are calculated, contracts, team, communication and quality control are planned.
Execution: This is the step when the things really happen. The main functions here are
controlling and correction actions in order to keep the project toward the expected results and into
the estimated cost and schedule.
Finishing: After the project results are achieved we have yet some necessary activities to
consider the project finished. These activities are the assessment of the results, inclusion of the
project into the projects historic and communicate all the stakeholders about the conclusion.
3.5 Over positioning of Both Processes
When we have a software development project, we have to use two processes
concomitantly: the Project Management Process and the Software Development Process. The other
processes (quality control and configuration management) are used too, but they are not subjects of
this work.
The first to be considered is the Project Management Process. It is used in any project, does
not matter if it is a software development project or not. The phases of this process are executed as
described in the “Dynamic View” topic.
If it is a software development project, we have to insert the software development process
into the Project Management Process through the initialization, planning and execution phases.
During the execution phase, it is recommended to re-plan the project in the beginning of each
Software Development Process phase.
3.6 The Planning Sub-Process
Each sub-process of Project Management Process has its own details and mapping. We
selected the planning sub-process to be explored here in more details due to its importance. All the
success of the project depends on a good planning.
There is a sequence of activities that has to be executed in order to produce a good plan.
These activities are represented as a workflow and have a relationship between them. The workflow
shows we have several main activities and secondary ones. The main activities are related with
scope, activities, resources and cost definition and the results are the project chronogram and the
project plan. The secondary activities, but no less important, are related with quality,
communication, team organization, risks and procurement.
The workflow of the Project Management Process details the nine areas of Project
Management, in sequenced activities to guide the Project Manager to produce a good plan.
