Page 339 - Global Project Management Handbook

16-26 MANAGEMENT OF GLOBAL PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

This approach to product management, project management, and collaborative tech-
nology tools—insisting on standardized, integrated, simple, and relatively few tools—not
only provides a high communication potential but also helps with all components of proj-
ect success: more punctual schedules, more satisfied customers, better cost-effectiveness,
and higher quality accomplishments. If this approach is not offered to the VGS team, the
team members end up struggling to find the right tools and how to use them, introducing
variability into the project management process. This may lead to subpar project perfor-
mance. Therefore, mother companies should provide the approach, and VGS teams
should get trained to use and understand such tools.

Metrics
Three interdependent tactical factors (see Fig. 16.3) support the strategic success factor
metrics. These tactical success factors enable the management team not only to track
where the project is but also to know if progress is being made and where the project is
headed. Using the first tactical success factor—project efficiency metrics—provides the
project manager with the ability to react in a timely fashion to deviations from cost, time,
and quality targets. However, a project that is managed only with these success factors in
mind still can fail to deliver to the expectations of the customer. It is also necessary to
define and track metrics that proxy the impact of the project on the customer—tactical
success factor number two. Finally, projects also need to be the means of carrying the
organization toward its own objectives for the future. This is why selecting projects that
score high in future preparation metrics, the third tactical success factor, is important.

CSF23
CSF22
CSF24

CSF22: Define and Use Project Efficiency Metrics. Lacking major efficiency mea-
sures or metrics in VGS projects, such as the efficiency metrics of schedule, cost, and
quality performance, makes the projects very vulnerable, and deploying them takes

that vulnerability away, as a VGS project manager noted: “We have actually lived
without metrics, and we got burned. It was really hard, and we were more vulnerable.
Big slips, more unknowns. . . . When you are just hearing things, you are just hearing
guesses. With metrics, now we know exactly what the right things are to look at.”
Especially in VGS, the efficiency metrics facilitate communication between the dis-
persed teams by specifying uniform targets across the board and measuring them.
In successful VGS projects, there are metrics that adhere to the overall project, such as
if the team is in time with respect to the milestones. A useful tool for tracking this metric
is a project dashboard (see Fig. 16.5), which uses color codes to show if a milestone is on
time. A performance-to-commitment metric compares how much time was allocated
upfront for each task and how much was used.
Good efficiency metrics also may be specific to the different stages of the project. For
example, during the integration testing and validation, bug find and fix trends, bug severity,
number of known bugs in the product, and releasing time are some of the metrics that are
used. Process efficiency metrics also can act as a source of motivation for the team. A project
manager who was in charge of an Oregon-Russia project said: “We track the number of bugs
as well as their severity by developer and publish them. At the end of the day, the developers
can say, this person had very few bugs, I had quite a few. And they will aim for that.”