High-Tech Yuga

Noting is free in this world, specifically for project manager. He need to watch the project cost carefully to stay within budget. Few tips for effectively manage the cost in a project: 1) Proper cost measurement: The project cost is not calculated properly due do underestimated the number of hours a project would take, lower the price and make the sale, client tries to reduce the project cost. Project manager need to take extra care in estimating project cost. As a project manager need to manage the triple constraints of the project management. For a project needs to be successful, these factors needs to be balanced. If you lower the cost you will get low quality deliverable, un-skilled resources and not meeting client expectation.   2) Choosing right people: Not everyone is right for every task.  Even though you try to hire well-rounded team members, there will always be areas where one outperforms the rest. Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses.  Be familiar with their work hab

Most of the organizations expect the technical role needs to play / assist team by project manager. The project manger has to be good in technical concepts to design the application and helping the team on problem solving. Based on my experience, in this article I have presented the important points to be focused during designing the application by project manager who is expected to play a role of an architect or work with architect: 1) Understanding end to end development life cycle: Refer the below end to end development life cycle, the architecture stared during the requirement and matured during development. During the requirement gathering phase the architect need to concentrate on feasibility of implementing the functional and non functional requirement.  Need to on board few resources in to project to perform the POC for evaluating the initial design. Create the design of the application during elaboration phase; the main point here is to create right size architecture base on p

Test Driven Development (TDD) is a software development practice that focuses on creating unit test cases before developing the actual code. It is an iterative approach that combines programming, the creation of unit tests, and refactoring. This is as opposed to software being developed first and test cases created later. Rules for TDD: write a “single” unit test describing an aspect of the program run the test, which should fail because the program lacks that feature write “just enough” code, the simplest possible, to make the test pass “refactor” the code until it conforms to the simplicity criteria repeat, “accumulating” unit tests over time Advantages of TDD: You only write code that’s needed More modular design Easier to maintain Easier to refactor High test coverage Tests document the code Less debugging Disadvantages of TDD: Developer can consider it as a waste of time. The test can be targeted on verification of classes and methods and not on what the code really should do. Tes

One of the most difficult tasks in any organization is the management of R&D activities. These R&D activities are usually headed up by architects, developers, managers, and even executives. All of these people, at one time or another, may act as R&D project managers. R&D project requires: Research and development (R&D) include activities that companies undertake to innovate and introduce new products and services. It is often the first stage in the development process. The goal is typically to take new products and services to market and add to the company's bottom line. R&D personnel were probably the first true project managers in the world. Problems faced by R&D project manager:      1) achieve an objective but lack of clear goals      2) budget constraints      3) resource constraints     4) tight schedule and unrealistic timeline Management Technique used by project manager for executing the R&D project: Need to ask below questions for identifyi

Defect leakage occurs on the Customer or End User side after the delivery of the application. Once the application has been released to the client, if the end user gets any kind of defect using the application, it is called "Defect leakage". Formula for Defect Leakage: Defect Leakage = Number of Defect found during next phase / ( Number of Defects found during testing + Number of Defects found during next phase) * 100 For Example, During the UAT production site, 50 defects were detected by the end users and 150 defects were detected throughout the QA process, including both the test site and the production site. Therefore, the defect leakage would be: Defect Leakage = (50/150)*100 Defect Leakage =33 % Reasons for Defect Leakage: Absence of stringent test cases walkthrough and review process. Environment differences. Missing test cases to cover appropriate condition. Poorly designed test case due to misunderstood requirements. Incorrect deployment in UAT or production. Use of

This article talks about calculating the team velocity of the agile project and addressing the benefit of the team velocity. Velocity is an extremely simple, powerful method for accurately measuring the rate at which teams consistently deliver business value.  It is a measure of how much product backlog items the team can complete in the given amount of time. It is used the compare the iterations for the given team on a given project, the note is only completed work counts for calculating the velocity. Before you begin to calculate your team’s velocity, you will want to complete at least three to five sprints. This allows for a team that is new to Agile project management to get used to the workflow and for any changes the team is going through to normalize. Your velocity will fluctuate during these initial sprints but will stabilize after three or more have been completed.  Agile velocity formula: Sprint 4: Planned = 8 user stories * 3 story points = 24 story points Actual = 4 user st

 Scrum defines several events (sometimes called ceremonies) that occur inside and outside each sprint: 1) Product Backlog Grooming: Backlog grooming is the only ceremony in scrum that doesn’t have a defined time box or even a frequency.  It is, however, a critical responsibility of the product owner with the help of their team to add new items to the list and order them based on their priority.  At the same time, outdated, redundant or non-valuable items should be removed from the backlog to keep it clean, valuable and actionable.  We call this as Release plan meeting happens quarterly once. Action taken from grooming meeting:      1) Estimate user stories     2) Insert new user stories     3) Re-Prioritize  user stories     4) Refine  user stories     5) Remove  user stories 2)  Sprint Planning: A sprint planning meeting is when the team (including the Scrum Master, Scrum Product Manager, and Scrum Team) meets to determine which backlog items will be handled in the next sprint. The s

Managing project is a challenge on day to basis for a project manager.  Managing the complex project will be very challenging for a project manager. The complex projects are run over budget and over schedule and the large scale application development projects are particularly challenging because of their complexity and high degree of interdependency among work streams, which includes integration with ERP, payment gateway, third party application, technology and cloud deployment. Between these team's in-sufficient information flows. To manage the complex projects follow below disciplines: To manage the complex projects follow below management technique: 1) Big Picture     1.1) Goal     1.2) Outcome     1.3)  Opportunities     1.4)  Problems     1.5) Success criteria 2) Team     2.1)  T.E.A.M = Together Everyone Achieves More     2.2) Match team and  skills     2.3) Clear role and  responsibilities     2.4) Create positive team environment     2.5) Motivate team by rewards 3) Share

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) . It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. Building on Agile and Lean, DevOps enables the business to respond to changes and meet customer needs faster. DevOps process: Coding – code development and review, source code management tools, code merging. Building – continuous integration tools, build status. Testing – continuous testing tools that provide quick and timely feedback on business risks. Packaging – artifact repository, application pre-deployment staging. Releasing – change management, release approvals, release automation. Configuring – infrastructure configuration and management, infrastructure as code tools. Monitoring – applications performance monitoring, end-user experience. Benefits of DevOps: Faster time to market Higher ROI Greater user/customer satisfaction Increased efficiency Improved collaboration Ea

Cloud automation involves using cloud management tools to achieve tasks without manual interference. Auto-provisioning servers, backing up data, or discovering and eliminating unused processes are some of the tasks that cloud automation could accomplish without real-time human interaction. We will go through the couple of automation tools: AWS CloudFormation allows you to model resources in YAML or JSON, automate them, and then deploy them in your AWS cloud-based infrastructure. Kubernetes: Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Kubernetes progressively rolls out changes to your application or its configuration, while monitoring application health to ensure it doesn't kill all your instances at the same time. If something goes wrong, Kubernetes will rollback the change for you. Take advantage of a growing ecosystem of deployment solutions.

Sales professionals and Program managers need an opportunity pursuit strategy that keeps them ahead of every curve in the road to the sale. It's a prediction of future sales of a product, either judgmental or based on previous sales patterns. They need to execute the skills to be buyer-centric, strategic and differentiated to work within the buyer’s changing world. Pursuit Strategy team must pull customers through the process by helping them: Understanding customer needs Gain clarity Evaluate options Increase confidence in the economic value of the solution Competitors Sales professionals can advance the sale by adhering to a set of guiding principles that generate and maintain momentum throughout the sales pursuit. The 4 Guiding Principles of a Sales Pursuit Strategy: This team will collaborate with Sales, Leadership and cross-functional stakeholders to define and lead with a mission to increase sales opportunity win probability and add value to every opportunity and proposal. Thi

We will develop and execute user story as below in Scrum as mentioned in the diagram ( green arrow ), but we need individual developers for UI Layer, Controller, Business Logic, Database, External Interface. Managing them will be difficult, when we have one Full Stack Developer he/she can develop application for all the layers. The Full Stack Developer is highly desirable, because she understands web development as a holistic science. He/ She can move anywhere within the application, from interface to data models, and contribute. A Full Stack Developer is a generalist. Project manager need to understand the project and architecture, allowing Full Stack Developers to understand all aspects of the project or product they are directing development on.  Involve from development and deployment to design and communication, and has the experience and skill set to intelligently contribute to those discussions. As a PM when you understand role and responsibilities of a Full Stack Developer, you

Application modernization is the practice of updating older software for newer computing approaches, including newer languages, frameworks and infrastructure platforms. This practice is also sometimes called legacy modernization or legacy application modernization. Four stages of Application modernization are: Using of cloud software, digital apps and using of hybrid cloud platform to help organization to achieve greater ROI. Rebuilding legacy applications as microservices, organization benefit to become a global market leader. Modernizing applications is the process of taking existing legacy apps and updating their platform infrastructure, internal architecture, and/or features. Conversations about application modernization today are focused on bringing monolithic, on-premises applications into cloud architecture and release patterns. This entails using micro-services DevOps.  Modernization is a key step in the process of moving from legacy applications to cloud-native ones. When org

A request for proposal (RFP) is a document that solicits proposal, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a service, product to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. The RFP specifies what the customer is looking for and describes each evaluation criterion on which a vendor's proposal will be assessed. An organization can benefit from multiple bidders and perspectives when seeking an integrated solution calling for a mix of technologies, vendors and potential configurations. Standard RFP process: An RFP generally includes: Overview About issuing organization Issuing organization's vision and Mission Information Technology organization Model Testimonials Line of Business (LOB)  Relevant past experience and performance Testimonials from past clients Project Overview Define project goal and needs Technical Approach Samples of your work Contract Details Timelines Quoted cost of the project Tentative project plan with

Microservices is a service-oriented architecture pattern wherein applications are built as a collection of various smallest independent service units. They get their name because each function of the application operates as an independent service. This architecture allows for each service to scale or update without disrupting other services in the application. Example for e-Commerce Microservice: In Below architecture diagram explained implementing simple Microservice module.     Advantages of Microservices: Microservices are self-contained, independent deployment module and independently manageable services. Change or upgrade each service individually rather than upgrading in the entire application. Enable easy integration Less dependency and easy to test. Dynamic scaling. Faster release cycle. Advantages of Microservices: Microservices has all the associated complexities of the distributed system. There is a higher chance of failure during communication between different services. Di

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated manner to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually. Program management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to meet program requirements. Organizations with mature program management are far more successful than those without it. Program managers oversee the fulfillment of larger organizational goals. They coordinate activities between multiple projects without directly managing them. Instead, they manage the main program, giving detailed attention to program strategy, project delegation, and program implementation. When an organization receives lot of customer requests having hard time to managing this required a Program Manager. As an e-Commerce program manager manage and facilitate below: e-Commerce program manager facilitates: Website planning Content production Social media marketing, event management Product Information System Digital asset management Blogs Managing sho

A Fixed-Price model allows you to leave all of the work to the developers until the product is ready. Time and Material , on the other hand, requires constant supervision of task progress, materials used, and budget spent, as well as frequent meetings with the development team. The FP contract price includes all known risks that can happen during project performance. These risks may occur or may not. Still, the customer always pays for them. The fixed price contract is a precise agreement on a particular time and cost, where a service provider guarantees to deliver the described results on specified terms. Such a system allows service providers to predict project delivery dates, rates, and requirements. The product owner gets a clear picture of the work scope and its pricing. Under TM contract, the customer will pay only for real project work. One doesn’t overpay for the risks which may not occur, but in case they take place, contrary to FP, it’s the customer who bears additional cost

Digital Transformation will focus on the critical aspects of building a digital-ready business. Digital Transformation is leveraging the drivers of transformation to build a digital business strategy, to lead organizations, and help them navigate through the digital disruption. Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to create new or modify existing business processes, culture, and customer experiences to meet changing business and market requirements. This reimagining of business in the digital age is digital transformation. Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technology by a company. Common goals for its implementation are to improve efficiency, value or innovation. Examples for Digital Transformation: Domino’s chatbot implementation Nike’s eCommerce strategy Use of Virtual Reality (VR) for patientcare in Healthcare E-commerce implementation during COVID AUDI’s innovative showroom using tablet key attributes creating good digital transforma

The project statement of work (SOW) is a description of products or services to be delivered by project. The Statement of Work, or SOW, is the bible for the work the project must produce. The SOW is a key governance tool whether it is being used to direct work for a vendor or contractor, or used to direct the work internally, the SOW must contain a description of all the work that is expected. The description need not be at the detail level, indeed for large projects capturing detail in the SOW is not practical, but should be comprehensive and include work that produces the projects deliverables as well as administrative work such as project reporting. The SOW will form a key part of the contract if the work is being done by a vendor or contractor. Work captured in this document is part of the vendor's contractual obligation to you. Work not contained in the SOW will only be done if it is mutually agreed upon, or introduced to the project through a change request. The SOW is also i

Lean agile aims to eliminate wasteful resources and tasks for improved efficiency and reduced costs, while never sacrificing quality. In fact, lean agile prioritizes bringing value to the customer with every decision that's made. Lean agile is a development method that helps teams identify waste and refine processes. The way of eliminating wastes are: The figure of the Product Owner represents a clever way to speed up the flow of information between the customer and the developers. This reduces the risk of rework that so often appears in non-scrum development projects.  Lean teaches us that each leader ( Scrum Maser ) must be in constant contact with his team and know each member well enough to understand the problems they encounter each day. This enables flow and therefore customer satisfaction. Having cross-functional teams , lean tells us, allows for a quick flow of information, because waiting for the contribution of a team member from another function doesn’t happen. In le

Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Pillars of  Empiricism . Various practices exist to forecast progress, like burn-downs, burn-ups, or cumulative flows. While proven useful, these do not replace the importance of empiricism . In complex environments, what will happen is unknown. Only what has already happened may be used for forward-looking decision making. Each artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured: ● For the Product Backlog it is the Product Goal. ● For the Sprint Backlog it is the Sprint Goal. ● For the Increment it is the Definition of Done. These commitments exist to reinforce empiricism . The sum of the Increments is presented at the Sprint Review thus supporting empiricism .

Challenge 1:   Team members are not adapted to Scrum to make estimate. At the grooming session involve with team and work along with them to convert epic in user story and break user story into task. Use Planning Poker or T-Shirt Size estimation technique to create estimate and involve them. So they see what the solution could be and how many effort it needs. Challenge 2:   The user stories are too big and not detailed enough. Release planning is the time entire scrum team work with product owner to discuss on the Epic to create user stories. Need to perform backlog grooming with Product Owner and Business Analyst during the sprint planning meeting to break user stories into small and doable. Challenge 3:   Almost all user stories are in progress till the last day of sprint. The first thump rule is the user stories with in the sprints should not depend on each other. Break user stories in to tasks which should be doable in a day. If you are using two week sprint follow 8 working day fo

Poor risk management has the ability to severely impact your project. Impacts of poor risk management leads to: Poor User Adoption Unrealized Benefits Late-running Projects Overspent Budgets Unhappy Clients Reputational Damage Project Failure When we are failed to identify risk, Your project will failure because you failed to predict the risks of changing conditions. You could lose enormous investment dollars if you fail to anticipate the risks the project. You could suffer irreparable damage to your company's reputation by failing to prepare to manage difficulties. It is the job of every project manager to come up with alternate plans that the team may adopt if the project begins to spiral out of control. Having a project risk management system helps in identifying the types of risks and mitigating them. Having a contingency plan in place is critical. This plan should identify all risks that the course of action to be taken if they materialize it. The risk will be any one below c

It is important for project managers to ensure that all the project stakeholders are on the same page and have a clear vision of the project. An uninvolved client can cause a lot of problems in the final stages of a project so it’s important to consider the customer’s feedback and keep them updated throughout the project. To overcome from the issues with stakeholder, Invite your client and other stakeholders to your project management tool so they can actively participate in shaping the project and providing feedback. Ensure that you keep all internal and external stakeholders in the loop right from the project planning stage. Schedule regular meetings with all stakeholders and address their concerns as required. Create process flow for effective stakeholder engagement and monitor .

A skills mismatch is the difference between the skills required to be successful in a position and the skill set of the employee occupying that position. This is starts from the hiring due to poor planning and forced to take up mismatched team due to demand and supply of the resources. Working with Inadequate skills of team members or Mismatched team skills causes negative effects on overall productivity. How to deal with team skills issue? Effective project managers pre-determine the needed project management skills and competencies and assess the available workforce to determine whether, additional staff and skillsets are required or not. An effective project initiation plan will deal with the needs of the project and the resources required to accomplish it. These resources include the human skill component as well. The project plan will further build upon the groundwork of the initiation document. Once the issue occurs during the execution of the project, as a project manager need t

Lack of accountability is most common in environments where there is no clear vision, resulting in progress being difficult to adequately assess. And, where definitive project schedules exist but are not necessarily expected to be met. There is no US in the team environment. More often, it's the result of an underlying issue, such as unclear roles and responsibilities, limited resources, a poor strategy, or unrealistic goals. Then what is accountability in project? Accountability is the obligation for an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept responsibility for them, and disclose the results in a transparent manner. Here are six ways to build accountability into a project: Address Accountability at the Kickoff Meeting. Highlight the Inter connected of Tasks. Get Commitments on Action Items. Publicly Follow Up on Action Items. Confront Poor Performance. Escalate Performance Issues When Necessary. The above six ways to build the accountability from the te

When people work together, there is always be disagreements. As a manager we need to find positive solutions when conflicts pop up. Why we get conflict in our team? There are many reasons, few are: Resources Priorities Schedule Personalities Cost Technical option Job level The best way to resolve a conflict is to confront the problem. Do your research, figure out what's behind it, and fix the root cause. The other ways are compromise, collaborating, smoothing, forcing and withdraw(just walk away from the argument).

Most managers consider financial issues as one of the biggest hurdles in effective project management. Finally every project boils down to MONEY. If you had a bigger budget, you could probably get more people to do your project more quickly and deliver more. That's why no project plan is complete until we get the correct budget. But no matter what it is, as a project manager we need to use the Cost Management process to over come from the budget challenges. Cost management process involves below steps: 1) Create Cost management Plan You need to plan out all the work you will do to make sure your project doesn't cost more than you have budgeted. This will be the input to the determine the budget. 2) Estimate Cost Estimate cost is based on scenarios how much it will cost or how much time it will take to complete or how many resources required to complete. Estimate the costs using the tools like Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM), ballpark estimate, if you are using scrum project you

Another common project management challenge is the lack of clear project goals and misalignment between goals and core business objectives . This issue often arises due to poor planning.  This isn’t necessarily the fault of a project manager. In many cases, companies fail to put sufficient time and effort into not only properly planning projects but ensuring those projects are aligned with a business strategy or roadmap. In some product based companies, to sell product lot of false commitment are given to get the contract by sales team. Once it come's to project manager, he get insufficient time to complete the project. Goals should be clearly stated and realistic. You should also be able to show how every action taken moves you closer to achieving the goal. This means you can measure the impact of the team and individual project members. SMART goal setting is the option to over come from the Lack of clear project goals. The acronym “ SMART ” means specific, measurable, attainabl

 90% of project manager's job is communication. Communication Management process helps project manager to over come from the challenges. Follow the below simple steps  to overcome from the Communication related challenges in your project. 1st point is, the problems having with Project managers: Communication Inconsistency Use of the right technology Not Enough Feedback Outdated Processes Inefficiency in Leadership 2nd point is, problems having with stakeholders: Communication problem within team Communication problem within organization Communication problem with customer Communication problem with other cross functional team As a Project Manager we need to create Communication Management Plan for the above, this helps who should communicate with whom and how often through the course of the project. The Communication Management Plan is prepared based on the analysis and interaction with team and sponsors.