Overcoming Project Management Challenges in Government Organizations

Project Management National Conference 2011 PMI India

Innovative use of Project
Management practices to overcome
the challenges in Government
Organizations

Shalu Gupta, R.T.Sundari

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Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management


Contents

1 Introduction......................................................................................................... 4
2 Major Challenges in government organization................................................ 5
2.1.1 Rough order of Magnitude Estimation....................................................... 5
2.1.2 Scope Creeping............................................................................................. 6
2.1.3 Project Management as Uninspired Taskmaster...................................... 6
3 Establishing the Project Management Office (PMO)....................................... 6
3.1.1 Establishing the processes for smooth flow of the projects................... 8
3.1.2 Quantitative measurement of Organization Process Performance......... 8
4 Innovative ideas implementation.................................................................... 10
4.1.1 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Based Effort tracking tool........10
4.1.2 Project tracker and highlighter..................................................................11
4.1.3 Team Performance measurement using Balanced score card ............. 11
4.1.4 Implementation of Agile Project Management Methodology................. 12
4.1.5 Reusable component library and Knowledge Bank ............................... 13
4.1.6 Process and Project Management trainings ........................................... 14
5 Conclusion and Lesson................................................................................... 15
6 References......................................................................................................... 16
7 About Authors................................................................................................... 17

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The Project Management practices are critical in every sector – Private,
Government or NGO. Due to the absence of concrete project management
practices and fear of failures many projects in Government organizations are
outsourced. Therefore establishing proven project management practices have
become a necessity in the government sector and are essential for delivering
successful projects. However, in relation to certain key factors like scope
creeping, ROI estimation and planning, the people in charge of the projects do
not take accountability due to fear of associated implications. As such the task of
establishing sound Project Management practices is quite challenging and
difficult in government organizations.

An attempt is made in this paper to present the challenges faced in establishing
project management practices. This paper also explains the agile project
management methodology used for on time delivery while maintaining the quality
of the project deliverables. It also gives an idea how the process performance
baselines and process performance models are established initially, analyzed
and improved upon. This explores the innovative thoughts implemented like
RFID based effort tracking, balance score card, earned value management,
reusable component core library and quantified improvements in the metrics. We
have tried to show how these techniques helps the project managers in
estimation, planning, identifying the critical factor for the project using PPM, issue
management, change management, knowledge management, use of existing
best practices established in the organization and so on. Finally this paper
presents some of the lessons learnt and the major benefit achieved in cost,
schedule, quality, customer satisfaction by the organization.

Keywords Project Management office (PMO), Process Performance Baseline
(PPB), Process Performance Model (PPM), Balanced score card, Earn Value

1 Introduction

Information technology has made a significant impact in the private and
government organization. Organization wide established best project
management techniques and proven maturity models has been already used in
most of the private sectors to manage and on time delivery IT projects. But
managing such IT Projects in government organizations are still lacking in using
project management practices. Due to this most of the IT projects in government
organization are either outsourced or failed. This paper is not only to highlight the
major challenges in IT government projects, but it also explore the use of
innovative and proven project management tools and techniques to overcome
the challenges. It also highlights the role of project management office and its
necessity in the government organization and use of Project Management

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practices to assist project managers with the direction and information about the
project.

This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the major challenges
faced in establishing project management practices. Section 3 describes the
establishing a project management office in the organization and how to
implement these practices in the organization. Section 4 gives the conclusion
and lessons learnt.

2 Major Challenges in government
organization

Most of the critical challenges in government organization are common. Some of
the critical challenges are

• Rough order of Magnitude Estimation

• Scope creeping

• Project Management as Uninspired Taskmaster

2.1.1 Rough order of Magnitude Estimation

Most of the projects in government organizations are needed to develop from
scratch e.g in areas of e-governance, health informatics and research based
project etc. Sometimes requirements are very vague at the initial stage of the
project. Projects in government sectors are very huge in size but the initial
estimation of cost and schedule is is not done correctly due to ineffective due
diligence and estimation model on the project. Cost is also determined by
available resources rather than by objective assessment and by the analogy of
similar completed projects. There are no established processes of using the
historical data which relates to used software metric and inputs from subject
matter experts. The projects are not properly sized with standard established
estimation techniques like FP estimation or COCOMO model. No bottom up
estimation technique is used to determine the prior completed steps and then
reconciliation with top down approach. The initial ball park value of estimates is
not effectively revised during the project execution. Because of lack of precise
estimation technique, project gets exceeded from budgeted estimation of cost
and schedule. This led to poor requirement analysis cascaded its effect to poor
design, high defect densities at deliverable stage, much more rework and
virtually endless testing. Due to this many times project get delayed, cancelled or
sometime outsourced.

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2.1.2 Scope Creeping

Scope creep refers to uncontrolled changes. This issue generally occurs when
scope of the project is not properly defined or controlled. Scope creep is the one
of the major challenge in delivering the large development projects in
government IT projects. Initially requirements are not very clear and limited
amount of time is used for requirement feasibility study. Customers of these
organizations are also from non IT sectors. They don’t understand the complete
requirement initially but later they come up much critical functionality and these
add to enormous scope creep. These impacts hugely on the cost and schedule
of deliverables milestone. Many new features are added to project without proper
impact analysis of changes. There is no established mechanism for handling the
change request. These change requests obscure the ultimate goal of the project
and fail to yield the desired outcome. More often users have different perspective
about the requirements and their end results. This also creates the problem of
scope creeping, which delays the project implementation and completion. Lack of
stakeholder involvement at initial stage of the project is also contributed in scope
creeping.

2.1.3 Project Management as Uninspired Taskmaster

Software lifecycle development methodologies like waterfall model, spiral model
etc grew out of a need to control larger development projects. The difficulties of
estimating efforts and managing the project to deliver results is much complex.
While these methodologies may have worked for some organizations in the past
and may still work in some circumstances, for many companies these
methodologies only added cost and complexity while providing a false sense of
security that management was “doing something” by exhaustively planning,
measuring, and controlling. Project manager are seen as Taskmaster who plans
and control the document. Allocate the resource and try to deliver the project. He
has to maintain the stress of predictability for planning the last details of
development before it is delivered and looks into linear development lifecycle –
requirement led analysis leading to designs which in turn lead to development.
Manager has to be dependent on deterministic, reductionist approach that relied
on task breakdown, and was predicated on stability – stable requirements,
analysis and stable design. In realistic sense, the requirements are not stable,
which calls for re-design in coding phase.

3 Establishing the Project Management
Office (PMO)

PMO plays a vital role to establish and manage project management practices in
most of the organizations. To overcome the challenges faced in government IT
sectors in the Project management practices a Project Management Office
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(PMO) is established. The main role of PMO is to provide the status to the
management continuously about the running projects. The objective of PMO is to
improve project delivery in terms of schedule, budget and quality. To meet the
organization’s goal, PMO is involved throughout lifecycle of the projects. The
new projects are imitated in PMO through the PIN (Project Initiation Note)
creation. The projects estimation is done by using different well proven
estimation techniques like function point estimation or process based estimation.
In function point estimation sizing mechanism is done during the life cycle of the
application development or enhancement mainly in the initiation requirements
phase where raw users requirements are gathered and converted to initial
technical and then final functional requirements. Thereafter based on the type of
projects, identify the counting scope and application boundary and again adding
the value adjustment factor to calculate the adjusted FP count to get the size of
project. In process based estimation total number of processes in each module is
identified as Simple, medium and complex. Subsequently conversion of complex
and medium process into simple process to be undertaken to get aggregate size
of the project. This is done to improve the estimations. PMO should also
establish the strategy to measure the project progress using Earned Value
Measurement. The earned value is calculated at regular intervals and project
estimations are revised if required. The earn value analysis can be invoked at
any stage of project to check the health of project and helps to control schedule
variance and cost overrun.

PMO shall do some strategic planning to make the project management
practices successful such as

• Establishing the processes for smooth flow of the projects using CMMI
framework.

• Quantitative measurement of Organization Process Performance (OPP) to
control the projects.

• Innovative tools implementation such as RFID based effort tracking tool ,
Project tracker and highlighter , Team performance measurement using
Balanced score card

• Implementation of Agile Project Management Methodology

• Establishing the reusable component library and Knowledge bank

• Process and Project Management trainings

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3.1.1 Establishing the processes for smooth flow of
the projects

PMO initially establishes the processes in the organization. These processes
help in planning the project, for management of requirements, configuration,
scheduling, costs, risks involved, communication and control of the project.
Process owners are identified for each process so that each process can be
effectively established and used in the organization. The processes effectiveness
is evaluated by PMO and processes are improved as per the recommendations
received by process owners. The PMO also introduces the requirement
traceability matrix. The requirement traceability matrix is a very good tool for
forward and backward requirement mapping. It also helps in full coverage of
requirement and controlling the scope creep challenge. The PMO also introduce
the practice of identifying all key stakeholders at the initial phase of the projects.
The requirements are discussed with identify stakeholders so that they have
common understanding about the same. This will help in controlling the scope
creep challenges.

3.1.2 Quantitative measurement of Organization
Process Performance

The projects are followed the established processes in the organizations. PMO
with the help of Quality Assurance team measure the current performance of the
organization to identify strengths and weakness of processes. For this purpose
metrics are identified initially. The different project metrics are derived from
projects data. But in order to measure the organization performance, Process
Performance Baselines (PPBs) are established. PPB measure the organizational
performance. Figure 1 represents the sample chart of effort and schedule
variance PPB.

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Figure 1 Effort variance and Schedule variance PPB

For controlling the project, different tools and method are followed. Process
control is based on a comparison of what is happening today with what
happened previously. How the process typically performs or builds a model of
how we think the process will perform and calculate control limits for the
expected measurements of the output of the process. Then we collect data from
the process and compare the data to the control limits. The majority of
measurements should fall within the control limits. Measurements that fall outside
the control limits are examined to see if they to belong to the same population as
our initial model. If not the points that fall outside the limits are investigated. To
control the project the Project Performance Models (PPM) is derived from
organizational process performance data. Using PPM the project managers are
able to predict the outcome of the projects. Table 1 represents the sample PPM
established in the organization.

Table 1: Sample PPM Established

PPM June 2010 Sep. 2010
Schedule -0.0651-0.988 SRS Review 0.213 - 1.53 Design Review
variance Effectivness+0.665Design Review Effectiveness + 0.0556 DD at SIT
Effectivness+0.180 DD at SIT
Effort Variance 2.04 + 0.956 SRS Review Efficiency + 2.54 1.42 - 3.75 Design Review
Design Review Efficiency - 3.61 Design Efficiency + 5.91 Design Rework
Rework Effort - 6.04 Code Rework Effort Effort
Defect Density 1.34 - 13.9 SRS Review Effectiveness + 2.16 10.0 - 7.82 SRS Rev. Effectiveness
Design Review Effectiveness - 1.40 Code - 5.02 Design Rev. Effectiveness
Review Effectiveness
Rework at 0.114 + 0.229 SRS Review Efficiency+ 0.150 0.431 - 0.109 Design Review
coding phase Design Review Efficiency Efficiency+ 0.0437 Defect Density

PPB and PPM help the PMO further to measure the Project level goal setting.
The PPM is also used by the Project Managers to quantitatively control the
projects in terms of schedule variance, effort variance, defect density and rework.
These models give the indications of strengths and weakness of overall projects
performance running under the umbrella of the organization. Metrics provide
project tracking and control the performance at project level.
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4 Innovative ideas implementation

By establishing the project management tools and best practices through PMO
facilitates the automation of manual process to track efforts, measuring
productivity and performance of functional groups.

4.1.1 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Based
Effort tracking tool

Earlier, there was no automated process to capture the actual efforts and
schedule delay. In such cases manual process was used for capturing the efforts
and deriving different metrics. The physical copy of data sheet was sent to
different projects manager to fill the project data. Based on data received,
Process performance baseline and Process Performance models were
generated. When these baselines and models were analyzed, many times it was
observed that data received was not accurate. The need for an automation
process thus arises. Based on this requirement RFID based effort tracking
system tool has been developed. The employee attendance is capture through
the RFID card. RFID antenna records the each in/out entry of the employees in
the log file. The log files are read by effort tracking software. The software
calculates the effort spent on each project. The different projects PERT data from
MS Project are linked with the effort tracking tool. The employees fill the daily
activities based on their project activities. This tool captures the efforts of
individual employee. The Quality assurance group uses this tool to generate the
report at project level. The different reports are generated from the tool like
summary effort report, detail effort report, schedule variance reports. These
reports are sent to PMO and senior management. The PMO analyze the reports
and take necessary corrective / preventive action based on the organization
business objectives. The major gain achieved with this tool is that it reflects the
actual project performance, helps in improving the productivity, schedule and
effort. This tool also helps the PMO to improve the resource utilization. Figure 2
represents the improvement in schedule variance in each quarter.

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Figure 2 Improvement in schedule variance

4.1.2 Project tracker and highlighter

The PMO also stress upon need of automated tool which track and highlight the
overall project status. It will provide high level summary of milestone status,
change request status, major blocking issues and achievements in the projects.
It also highlights the status in green (on time) and in red (delay). This tool helps
in controlling the schedule, scope and budget. It also helps in motivating the
team by highlighting the team achievements.

4.1.3 Team Performance measurement using
Balanced score card

Balanced score card is a strategic management method used by PMO to
determine team performance based on target set for future. This method links
the organization strategy and action. This method helps in setting the long term
and short term goal and measuring the goal on monthly basis. Table 2 represent
the sample Balanced score card used in the organization. Targets are fixed by
team members. Team members have to achieve minimum 3 targets and this is
also linked with the annual performance of team members.

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Table 2: Sample Balanced score card used

Sl. No. Measure Target
1. Value Proposed 140 L
2. Value Confirmed 70 L
3. Value Realized 50 L
4. Value Earned 20 L
5. Number of reported bugs from field 60
6. Mean Time to repair reported bugs in days 2
7. Deviation in Milestone 20 %
8. % Peer Reviewed Code / Design Document, etc. 50%
9. Modules Submitted to Library 12
10. % of Library Modules Used 30%
11. % of Code Generated with HLD and LLD 70%
12. Number of workshops/seminar conducted/attended 3
13. Copyright 9
14. Publications 2
15. Training 3
16. Patent 2

Balanced score card implementation in organization measure the financial
expenses in the projects on monthly basis, improved the contribution towards the
organization and increased the rate of individual learning and research oriented
work environment. It helps to align everyone’s goal in the organization so that
each employee can understand his/ her role to achieve organizations’ objectives.
The Balanced score card also works as a performance feedback tool for senior
management to give the employee his / her accomplishments.

4.1.4 Implementation of Agile Project Management
Methodology

The past data of various organizations shows that agile development is
consistently delivering meaningful and measurable business results. Strong
management is absolutely critical to the successful adoption and application of
agile methodologies. The use of Agile methodology plays a vital role for various
organizations; small, medium and large enterprises. The key drivers for adopting
agile project were to manage changing priorities and to accelerate time to
market. 90% of the organizations reported increased productivity. 85% of the
organizations reported reduced software defects. 83% of the organizations
reported accelerated time to market and a 66% reported reduced cost.

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Figure 3 Agile methodology workflow

Organizations have also initiated the adaptive project management of agile
methodology with emphasis on Scrum programming and have found that many
established project management practices still apply to agile development
projects – with some adaptation and a strong dose of leadership. Agile
methodology is applied to handle scope creeping. All deliverables module of the
project is indentified as backlog. Projects are divided into smaller groups named
Sprint lasting1-4 weeks. Figure 3 represents the agile methodology lifecycle. In
each iteration of Sprint minimum testing is done and application is deployed.
Limited functionality is delivered in each iteration. Large projects especially in
the areas like e-governance and health, showed products were improved in
quality performance, cost, productivity, on time delivery and customer
satisfaction.

4.1.5 Reusable component library and Knowledge
Bank

Generally, components developed under one project are not being re-used in
other projects thus resulting in duplication of work and more effort. Similar
defects found in different projects. Reusable component library may be
established in organization to utilize the components already developed under
different projects. Defect density can be improved with the use of Reusable
components as the components were tested already. Use of reusable
components generates less rework in debugging and customization. This will
help in delivering high quality product which increases the customer satisfaction
index.

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Table 3: Improvement in schedule and effort variance

Metrics June 2010 Dec 2010

Mean SD Mean SD Improvement in
mean
Effort Variance 19% 12% 10% 8% -9%

Schedule Variance 27% 6% 9% 6% -18%

Defect Density 2.53 1.75 1.14 -0.78

After establishing the component library, PMO could measure the improvement
in metrics. Table 3 reflects the improvement in Effort Variance, Schedule
Variance and Defect density by 9%, 18% and 0.78.

The Knowledge Bank is established in organizations to share best practices from
different projects, training reference material to share the knowledge between all
employees. PMO may start to maintain previous and current project documents
to use as a reference material for estimation, planning, risk identification. The
aim of establishing knowledge bank is to improve the estimation for future
projects, adopt the best practices and communicate the lessons learnt from the
past experience.

4.1.6 Process and Project Management trainings

To successfully implement project management practices, employees in the
organization should also be made aware of the processes. To achieve this
objective, the process awareness trainings are organized by the PMO at regular
intervals for individual employees. Internal audits are also conducted periodically.
During internal audits it was observed that project managers are still lacking in
project planning, tracking and controlling the projects, process and components.
PMO decides to organize the project management professional training for
different project managers. There was tremendous improvement observed in
internal audits findings after the project management training was imparted. The
data shows the significant improvement in the schedule and effort variance.
Figure 4 represents the improvement in project planning and controlling before
and after the PMI training.

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Figure 4 Improvement in Project management practices

5 Conclusion and Lesson

With the effective implementation of proven project management techniques and
best practices, the organization has recently achieved CMMI Level 5 maturity.
This certification is one of the key milestones towards the consistency and
continuous improvement in processes with the implementation of new innovative
ideas. This is the benchmark step for many other Government IT organizations,
PSU’s etc

Process can be redefined and automated to reduce the challenges in grabbing
and managing the products development and services of different sectors of e-
governance, healthcare and embedded systems. Many organizations still bear a
huge burden of cost in premature planning, without the rapid iterative
development and continuous feedback from customers that an organization has
come to realize are prerequisites for success today.

Tools like RFID effort tracking, Project tracker and highlighter and Balanced
Score Card has significantly contributed in streamlining the established
processes and significantly reducing the redundancy and discrepancy of manual
data by capturing the actual data. The data are now effectively used to measure
and monitor the overall health of the projects. This results in optimum utilization
and continuous improvement in productivity of organization resources, which
leads to deliver the quality product and services with high customer satisfaction.
This helps the organization to manage the project with high predictability.

It is pertinent to highlight some of the major lessons learnt during the establishing
project management practices and implementation of innovative ideas in the
organization, as set out below:-

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• Fit the PMO to the organization culture not the other way round.

• Strengthening the estimation process by developing the guidelines for
effective use of estimation.

• Implementation of automated tools in turning the stable process to mature
capable process.

• Capturing actual project data increase the visibility and helps to improve the
product or service quality.

• Strengthening the process of identifying the risk at earlier stage of project
with appropriate action plan to mitigate them.

• Improvement in stakeholder involvement at the beginning stage of the
project.

• Establish strong communication channels between all stakeholders.

• Focus on deliverables that gives value to the customer.

• Create environment for project management for the team members i.e.
bottom up approach.

• Ensure senior management support throughout the project. Senior
management should be “kept in the loop” so they have an understanding of
the need for change and the goals of the project.

• Process and project management trainings helped in improving productivity
and understanding of the practitioners.

6 References

1. R.T.Sundari, P.N.Barwal, Rishi Prakash, Rajiv Yadav, Chinmay Garg, D.K.Jain “An
analysis of factors influencing success and failure of IT Projects” ASCNT 2009 C-DAC
Noida

2. Abhijit Sinha “Balanced Score Card : A Strategic Management Tool” Vidyasagar
University Journal of Commerce ,vol. 11, March 2006

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3. Gary Humphreys, Margo Visitacion “Mastering Project Management Fundamentals
Critical for Successful Earned Value” Oracle Corporation USA Sep.2009

4. Falbo R.A., Borges L.S.M, Valente F.F.R , “Using Knowledge management to
improve software process performance in a CMM level 3 organization” page 162-
169,International conference on QSIC, 2004

5. A guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge , Project Management Institute

7 About Authors

Ms. Shalu Gupta working as Scientist-‘C’in C-DAC Noida. She is certified
Project Management Professional. She has nine years of experience in
software development. She has worked in the field of NMS, SNMP,
Optical comm., DSLAM OCR and Quality Assurance. She has worked in
various companies like C-DoT, Wipro Technology and Flextronics
Software Systems. Currently she is associated with the Quality
Assurance Group. She has published 6 international and national
research papers. Her area of interest includes Software Quality
Assurance and Software Metrics.

shalugupta@cdacnoida.in

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R.T.Sundari working as a consultant in C-DAC Noida. She has a post
graduation in management and more than 30 years of experience in
designing, development, testing and quality assurance. She has
published 3 national research papers. She is currently heading the PMO
and Quality assurance division.

sundari@cdacnoida.in

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