A primer on project management

All of us have heard, some read, the famous best seller on Execution: The discipline of getting things done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Execution translates visions of the organisations in to reality. In the software industry, it often translates to effective project management. The topic assumes more relevance today especially for software firms that are at “tipping point” in their growth stories.

The Project Manager (PM) and the development team today deal with many pressures - senior management, marketing, finance, customers, and users - during the software development process. These pressures impact the cost and the quality of the software produced. There are generally more than one or two reasons for a software project to fail, and it usually is a combination of technical, project management and business decisions.

Opting to outsource

Project life cycles have become shorter, thanks to rapid evolution of technologies and markets. This has resulted in short-term contract agreements, with customers expecting the firm to ramp up in capabilities in short time to meet their needs. The clients demand more value for the outsourced work as cost arbitrage of the Indian firms continue to be eroded and are looking “to squeeze every dollar spent”. Hence, there's an increasing need to manage projects effectively and efficiently – leaving no slack on cost, quality and schedule.

Software outsourcing projects are of two types: fixed price (FP) contracts and time & material (T&M) contracts. In FP contracts the software firm gets a fixed price and pays for all realised costs. This keeps the software firm interested in managing the projects effectively, with available resources at minimal cossts to meet schedules.

In T&M contracts, though the client pays for all realised costs, the onus of finding resources (mainly competent engineers) for the projects rest with the firm.

This poses a challenge in executing effective staff management in a highly attrition-afflictedindustry. All these factors compel companies to increasingly focus on the following project management capabilities.

Meticulous methods

First, define and defend the boundaries of the project well with the client. . Effective requirements, scope management, defining exact deliverables and committing to all these become important. Research has often showed that badly defined requirements are one of the main reasons why software projects fail. These can be better managed by shortening the cycles for delivery and periodically delivering smaller work products that allows clients to provide timely feedback. Methods such as agile project management are tailored for this context. These methods reduce risks for both the client and the firm .

Second, have robust methodologies and frequent cross-checks to ensure that effort estimates are appropriate, especially in FP projects. While optimistic, under-estimates often lead to unmanageable projects, pessimistic over-estimates end up as a losing proposition. Hence, the need for reliable statistics.

Third, focus continually on people's productivity and skills . This becomes a challenge as firms tend to increase the bottom of the “pyramid model” of resourcing to reduce costs. Project managers often have to deal with partially trained freshers, mentor and motivate them and promote them to get them to the level of co-owners of the project . Apart from technical capability building, this also requires the firms to invest in project management capabilities. The likes of Project Management Institute (PMI) have developed exhaustive framework for accessing and developing project management capabilities. But the unique nature of the software industry requires a comprehensive project management training programme that focuses on experiential learning through internal case studies and sessions conducted by in-house experts. Since each firm is unique with respect to its organisational climate and the types of projects they handle , best practices need to be tailored to become effective in the organisational context with greater emphasis on practices that has worked well in the organisation.

Risk planning

The need for appropriate risk planning and management, as technologies and business environment continues to evolve, cannot be emphasised enough. If identified risks are not re-assessed and controlled , there is no insight to the problems within the project. These problems could entail inadequate engineering resources or delayed third party components, situations that can result in unpleasant surprises for the project managers.

CXOs looking for levers to pull the organisation to the next levels of performance while meeting higher customer expectations need look no further – the one labelled “Project Management” is the one to try first.

(This article is written by Ramakrishnan L, Selvaraj V. and Dr. V. Sridhar from Sasken Communication Technologies. Views expressed here are personal. )

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