Customer Management System
There are tons of systems out there trying to improve business processes of utility companies in general or electric companies in specific.
The key is still doing the re-engineering process well and the application system will just a tool to follow the processes. I put some of my thoughts about Electric Management System in this blog. Feel free to read and comment.
"Analysis and Design" Phase is a phase in Project Management for Application or Software. During this process, a consultant or analyst will do depth analysis on the current situation and relate them with the application, software, or system that are going to be implemented or enhanced.
Though it is one of very important phase in the project management, there seem to be ignored or not paid attention to. Below are the common reasons:
1. The Analysis and Design considered as a "boring" phase in the project. The analyst need to document all activities and gaps that we identified. The design created is sometime too general. Client or parties being interviewed are sometime just tell the problems in general without going into details. They get bored telling the problems and assuming that the consultant or analyst should pick up their own from any documentation available.
2. Lack of of time dedicated. With limited time, analyst often relies on client's documents or interview. The important part is too see or experience him/herself the current system and understand the behavior and problems of the current systems.
3. Related to point 1 and 2, the design is not detailed or not yet verified by the technical people that are going to do the enhancement. The design is supposed to be detailed with proposed print screens of the enhancement or functionalities. Clients or users does not tend to understand the detail design during approval. In their mind, they will wait until the development is finished and will do the review afterwards. But this is not how it suppose to work. Both parties should understand in details what the design is and how the end product will be to avoid arguments during product testing.
In order to avoid problem and make a good analyst and design, project manager or team leader should allocate enough time and good analyst on this phase. Analyst should understand fully about the system and create as detailed design documentation as possible. All proposed windows, functions, and button should be presented if applicable. Analysis on cases, what if, should be documented as well.
On the other hand, client or user should put more effort collaborating with analyst to inform him/her all concerns. When the design documentation if finished, client should understand completely what are in the document.
In the end, it is better to re-work on design documentations until both parties are satisfied with the design. It is more cost and time savings to re-do the design documentations instead of to re-do the development in future.
Implementing Electric Utility System is quite similar like implementing IT Projects. The rate of failure projects is quite high.
Based on the study done on IT Projects quoted from CIO.com
n 1994, the researchers found that 31 percent of the IT projects were flat failures. That is, they were abandoned before completion and produced nothing useful. Only about 16 percent of all projects were completely successful: delivering applications on time, within budget and with all the originally specified features.
"As of 2006, the absolute failure rate is down to 19 percent," Johnson says. "The success rate is up to 35 percent." The remaining 46 percent are what the Standish Group calls "challenged": projects that didn't meet the criteria for total success but delivered a useful product.
This rate should aware us everytime we are going to start the project. Typical reasons in implementing the Electric Utility System is lack of knowledge of project scope. Or maybe... misunderstanding of project scope from both parties.
Marketing people at the starts tries to sell the project with no clear definitions of the project. Or the client as well sometimes did not see on the details. Thus, when the project starts it is difficult to implement strict milestones to close some stages. Protocol of acceptance becomes difficult to sign and vendors becomes more lenient to give some modifications. When modifications are given, the client does not stop asking for more modifications.
Thus, before starting the project both parties should know in details and agree upon the scope. When the project starts, many project management tools or methodologies can be use to monitor critical path and problems arises that can hinder the objective of the project.
I read an article of a Project Manager who are running off the time to monitor his ongoing projects. And in the same time he has to obtain more projects. He was wondering why some of his colleagues can spend more time in playing golfs and their quotas are always reached.
I like the discussions that was presented there because one of the writers told him to do simple time managements to handle all the task. The time management described composes of 2 categories, namely:
1. Overall Project Timeline.
This was done by creating a huge board of project timeline. Put this board in our office and you can update it using pencil because most of the time, the schedule can change.
2. Daily Things to Do.
Before end of day, create a list to do for tomorrow with its prioritization. The next day, attack your things to do one by one.
Most of us know how to use simple time management. But only few of us implement them religiously. So... start your simple time management today. For details discussions about the article I read, it can be found here Project Management Issues
Milestones is used to check on the health of your project. Milestones provide an opportunity to validate the current state of the project.
A milestone is a scheduling event that signifies the completion of a major deliverable or a set of related deliverables. A milestone, by definition, has zero duration and no effort. A milestone is a marker in your schedule. You don't place milestones in your schedule based on a calendar event. In other words, you don't schedule a milestone for the first Friday of every month.
Quote from Tech Republic:
Milestones are great for managers and the sponsor because they provide an opportunity to validate the current state of the project against the overall schedule. Since each milestone signifies that some set of underlying work has been completed, your sponsor should know immediately that your project is behind schedule if a milestone date is missed. The sponsor does not need to know the individual status of all the activities in the workplan. He just needs to keep track of the status of the milestones to know if a project is on schedule or not.
In addition to signifying the status of the project against the workplan, milestones also provide a great way to take a step back and validate the overall health of the project. In particular, the following types of activities can be scheduled for (or at) each major milestone.
* Validate that work done up to this point is complete and correct.
* Make sure that the sponsor has approved any external deliverables produced up to this point.
* Check the workplan to make sure that you understand the activities required to complete the remainder of the project. You did this when the project started, but each milestone gives you a chance to re-validate that you still understand what is required to complete the project.
* Double-check the effort, duration, and cost estimates for the remaining work. Based on prior work completed to date, you may have a much better feel for whether the remaining estimates are accurate. If they aren't, you'll need to modify the workplan. If it appears that your budget or deadline will not be met, raise an issue and resolve the problems now.
* Issue a formal status update and make any other communications specified in the Communication Plan.
* Evaluate the Risk Management Plan for previously identified risks to ensure the risks are being managed successfully. You should also perform another risk assessment to identify new risks.
* Update all other project management logs and reports.
These activities should be done on a regular basis, but a milestone date is a good time to catch up, validate where you are, get clear on what's next, and get prepared to charge ahead.
