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Managing in the yellow zone philadelphia spin
- 1. Senior
Partners
Guild
Managing in the Yellow Zone
Getting the troubled project under control
(and keeping it there)
Philadelphia Software Process
Improvement Network
November 20, 2003
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 2. Senior
Partners
Guild
Topics
What is a Yellow Zone project?
What’s in a color
Preventing the Yellowing of the Green
When it goes Yellow anyway
A Yellow Zone rescue infrastructure
The Orange Zone: unsalvageable Yellow Zone
projects
Questions
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 3. Senior
Partners
Guild
What is a Yellow Zone project?
Green, Red, or Yellow?
– Green Zone – Projects that are on schedule and on
budget, with no significant risk factors
– Red Zone – Projects that are in serious trouble, with a high
likelihood they will fail
– Yellow Zone – Projects at risk, but potentially salvageable
The line from Green to Red usually passes through
Yellow
Up to 70% of all active projects are in the Yellow
Zone
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 4. Senior
Partners
Guild
What’s in a color?
The Business Case is the reference point
– Green Zone Project will probably achieve the goals and
objectives of the business case
– A Yellow Zone Project may fail to achieve at least one goal
or objective in the business case
– A Red Zone Project will probably fail to achieve the goals
and objectives in the business case
Green Zone projects can turn Yellow, and Yellow can
turn Red or back to Green
Red is likely to stay Red until Dead
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 5. Senior
Partners
Guild
What defines a Green Zone project?
All business requirements are traceable to the business
case, and the entire business case is covered in the
requirements
All IT requirements are traceable to the business
requirements and all business requirements are covered
by the IT requirements
Requirements baselined and under change control
Clear lines of communication understood and followed
Ownership is being accepted
Milestones are being managed successfully
Minimal impact from rework time and costs
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 6. Senior
Partners
Guild
top causes of yellowing…
Bad idea in the first place
– Overambitious
– Ambiguous
– Dubious measurability
– Aim at the wrong business drivers
Inadequate verification and validation of “upstream”
deliverables, e.g., business cases, requirements, and
specifications, can defeat even a GOOD idea
Poor communication between users and developers
Scope creep
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 7. Senior
Partners
Preventing the Yellowing of the Guild
Green
Establish a sponsor-IT partnership at the beginning
Focus on business user-IT communication from the
beginning
Revalidate upstream deliverables against their
predecessors whenever there is a change
Control scope creep relentlessly
– If it is not required by the business case, leave it out
– If no longer required by the business case, TAKE IT OUT
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 8. Senior
Partners
Guild
The kiss of death
No audit trail showing that clear lines of
communication are understood and ownership is
being accepted
– Clear lines of communication enable information to flow
efficiently and effectively
– Ownership prevents confusion or denial over authority and
responsibility
– Both are essential to correcting problems in anything else
If these are lacking, everything else will eventually
spin out of control
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 9. Senior
Partners
Guild
When it goes Yellow anyway
Happens when prevention is applied too late
Most frequent causes
– Inadequate requirements management
– Poor communications between business and development
If caught early enough, may be correctable or
reversible
BE PREPARED FOR MERCY KILLING
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 10. Senior
Partners
Guild
Early signs of Yellowing
More and more meetings accomplish little
Critical path action items start to remain open
Unanticipated pressures on cost and schedule
drivers
– Degrading relationship between developers and users
– Churn among key team members
– Difficulty in decisions about core requirements
– Significant changes in probability and/or potential impact of
exposure factors
– Changes in “drivers of complexity”
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 11. Senior
Partners
Guild
why kill a Yellow Zone project?
It all comes back to the business case
– How deep in the Yellow Zone?
– Is acceptable payback still possible?
– Is acceptable ROI still possible?
– Does the original business case still make sense?
If the answers don’t make a good case to continue,
logic says to kill the project
Still….
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 12. Senior
Partners
Guild
Doomed projects are hard to kill
Every project develops its own interest groups
– Sponsors with a political stake
– Developers whose jobs may depend on the project
continuing
– Vendors with a sale to protect
– Champions with an emotional stake
Cancelled projects can create organization problems
– Cancelled projects may have already burned a lot of money
– Cancelled projects may result in cancelled jobs
Few projects have an Exit Champion
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 13. Senior
Partners
The importance of an Exit Guild
Champion
The “Devil’s Advocate” for technology decisions
– Resists the political and emotional arguments to continue a
doomed project
– Provides Management with the information that enables
Decision-by-Fact
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 14. Senior
Partners
The Kill or Cure-and-Continue Guild
decision
Start with high-level project review
– Evaluate project viability against known exposure factors
– Revalidate the business case against the current project state
– Give as much credence to the Exit Champion as to the Continue
Champions
– Decide whether to Kill or Cure-and-Continue
If the decision is to Cure and Continue
– Reassign personnel wherever necessary
– Appoint a Team Catalyst
– Create the infrastructure to permanently correct the exposure
factors
– Add a recurring revalidation process to ensure continuing
alignment with the business case
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 15. Senior
Partners
Guild
The importance of a Team Catalyst
“The problems of software are not so much
technological as sociological”
– Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco, “Peopleware”, 1979
A Team Catalyst can help restore cooperative
working relationships and help ensure that they stay
cooperative
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 16. Senior
Partners
Guild
Initial anti-Yellowing actions
Ensure effective meeting management
Acknowledge and resolve relationship issues
Take control of team churn
Enforce timely resolution of critical path action items
Resolve requirements issues through facilitation
Strengthen contingency/continuity management
components of risk management process
Establish a “rapid response” process to manage
impact of changes in “drivers of complexity”
Use all of the above to create a Yellow Zone rescue
infrastructure
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 17. Senior
Partners
The Yellow Zone Management Guild
infrastructure
Processes
People
Tools
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 18. Senior
Partners
Guild
Processes
Business case revalidation
Requirements triage
Retrospective Verification and Validation of
deliverables
Risk-Driven testing
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 19. Senior
Partners
Guild
Business case revalidation
May prevent exercises in futility
May find legitimate, previously unrecognized
justifications to continue
– Additional or extended financial benefits
– “Intangible” operational benefits
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 20. Senior
Partners
Guild
“intangible” benefits
Often higher value than hard dollar benefits
Can strengthen a marginal business case
Can often be translated into tangible benefits
Examples:
– Improved customer satisfaction
– Improved employee morale
– Increased user self-sufficiency
Recommended reading:
– “Making Technology Investments Profitable: ROI Roadmap
to Better Business Cases ” by Jack M. Keen and Bonnie
Digrius (Wiley, 2003)
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 21. Senior
Partners
Typical Activities Guild
Identification of Business Requirements
Risk Assessment for Project and Product
Risk-Driven Testing
– Decomposition of Critical-risk Requirements into testable
parts
– Creation of Test Scenarios
– Execution of Test Scenarios
– Defect Reporting and Tracking
– Status Reporting
Intra-phase reviews and quality gates
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 22. Senior
Partners
Guild
Requirements Triage
Re-evaluate every requirement that has not been
completed for
– Criticality to the first release
– “Implementability”
– Impact on other requirements
– Impact on cost and schedule
Eliminate or defer any requirement that is not critical
to the business case in the first release
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 23. Senior
Partners
Retrospective Verification and Guild
Validation
Retrospective validation
Business IT
Business
Specification Code
Case Requiremen Requiremen
s
ts ts
Forward expectations and boundaries
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 24. Senior
Partners
Guild
Risk-driven Testing
Includes
– Decomposition of Critical Requirements into testable parts
– Creation/Execution of Test Scenarios
– Defect Reporting, Tracking and Status Reporting
Traces back to prioritized business requirements
Seeks to limit business exposure
Seeks “Big Bugs” first
Focuses on impact to the business case more than
probability of occurrence
Requires a high-efficiency method, e.g. table driven
scripts
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 25. Senior
Partners
Intra-phase reviews and quality Guild
gates
Re-assess business drivers and adjust business case
Re-prioritize business requirements
Re-prioritize IT requirements
Update test strategy to reflect reprioritized IT
requirements
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 26. Senior
Partners
Guild
Summing up
Prevention pays
Communication and partnership are essential
Every project creates an interest group biased toward
continuing the project
Revalidate the business case before adding to the
investment
Recover only what is worth recovering
It takes courage to kill a doomed project
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild
- 27. Senior
Partners
Guild
More information?
Robert Benjamin, Partner
609 448-1963 (P)
609 977-6214 (M)
609 371-1322 (F)
Inquiries@SeniorPartnersGuild.com
www.SeniorPartnersGuild.com
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©2003, Senior Partners Guild