d john peter

Project Management National Conference 2011 PMI India

Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management2|P a g e

D John Peter PMPAssociate Director, Mind Tree Limited

Achieving Delivery Excellence


Application of Select Tools of Psychology for Effective Project Management

Contents

1.1 ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... 4 2 KEYWORDS ..................................................................................................................... 5 3 EXCUTIVE SUMMARY .................................................................................................. 5 4 QUALITY JOURNEY ....................................................................................... 6 5 JOURNEY TO EXCELLENCE ......................................................................................... 8 6 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS .................................................................................... 9 7 KEY METRICS & MEASUREMENT ............................................................................ 11 8 WAY TO DELIVERY EXCELLENCE .......................................................................... 12 9 DELIVERY EXCELLENCE ........................................................................................... 13 10 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................. 15 11 REFERENCE ................................................................................................................. 15 12 Author Profile ................................................................................................................. 18

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1.1 ABSTRACT

ACHIEVING DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Practice leads to perfection and consistency brings stability. Perfection and consistency will ensure Quality. Will quality ensure Excellence? It is difficult to say ‘yes’ because quality means “Good” and excellence means “Extremely Good”. So Delivery Excellence means much more than Quality.

Delivery Excellence is the keyword and a critical factor for achieving success. If we closely look at the product and service industry, organizations are keeping “Delivery Excellence” as part of organization goal and hence they are searching an answer for the question “How to achieve Delivery Excellence?”

The only way organizations can be driven to achieve excellence is by keeping an eye on competition and world best practice in all aspects of the business (Bendell et. all, 1998). Several researchers (Pinto & Slevin, 1987 and 1988), (Pinto and. Kharbanda, 1995) have identified the project success factors (Refer Table-1). Similarly critical success factors that ensure “Delivery Excellence” should be identified.

Based on the current project management scenarios and the research data (refer Table-1), we have further analyzed and identified the set of critical factors (Refer Table-2) and techniques (refer table-4) that predominantly ensure “Delivery Excellence”.

Delivery Excellence techniques have already been implemented companies like Apple and Godrej. These companies achieved the highest level of success. Innovation co-creation is one of the techniques helped them to achieve delivery excellence. “The Power of Co-Creation” author Venkat Ramasamy has described how organizations could turn around their business from a low margin to high margin and loss making to profit making organization.

So this document will discuss about the best practices, tools and techniques available for “Achieving Delivery Excellence”.

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2 KEYWORDS

Delivery Excellence, Project Success, Techniques, Innovation

3 EXCUTIVE SUMMARY

ACHIEVING DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Excellence is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good. This is the definition from dictionary. Delivery Excellence of an organization is the quality of delivering outstanding or extremely good deliverables.

Quality means “Good” but excellence means “Extremely Good”. Delivery Excellence means much more than achieving Quality. So Delivery Excellence is much more than delivering projects within cost, time, effort or reducing defects or merely meeting expectations or reducing complaints. Nevertheless, these factors are critical for project management success but Delivery Excellence is crucial for project success. Project Success ensures Organizations success. Net effect “Delivery Excellence” ensures Organization success.

So today, organizations are investing in innovations and new initiatives to achieve “Delivery Excellence” and most of them are searching an answer for the question “How to achieve Delivery Excellence?” Apple is the best example to know about “achieving Delivery Excellence”. Apple delivered much more than product quality by bringing rich user experience features in iPods through innovation co-creation with customer which brought them breakaway success.

Sony products are famous for their quality but today Apple products are the most preferred. How can Apple compete with Sony – a market leader and gadgets giant? The logic is simple; Apple has the “Delivery Excellence” capability which has the power to go beyond Sony’s Quality.

It is not companies like Apple can achieve excellence or companies from Japan or USA can achieve excellence. Excellence can be achieved irrespective of the sector and country. After all excellence is a habit not an activity. “Super 30” of

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Project Management Success Organization SuccessProject Success

Delivery Excellence



Anand Kumar from Bihar, India is a great example for delivery excellence. By 2011, 236 of the 270 had made it to IITs and Discovery Channel showcased his work in a documentary. Today Japanese “famous for Quality” are coming all the way from Japan to meet Anand Kumar and learn the delivery excellence techniques.

So it is natural for organizations to learn “Delivery Excellence” techniques and move from the tag of “traditional organization” to “delivery excellence organization”. Hence this paper explores the new tools and techniques for “Achieving Delivery Excellence”.

4 QUALITY JOURNEY

FROM QUALITY TO EXCELLENCE

Japanese equipment is very good, very accurate, and very well maintained. In the 1950s and 1960s, Japanese goods were synonymous with cheapness and low quality, but over time its quality initiatives began to be successful. Fig-1 shows Japan’s quality journey from 1950 to till date.

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Fig: 1: Quality Journey

QM: Quality Management SQC: Statistical Quality ControlTQM: Total Quality Management SPC: Statistical Process Control

Japan has been dominating in implementing the quality processes and procedures that provide them the highest quality and reliability in today's electronics markets. How Japan has taken lead in quality initiatives? Japanese companies have invested their time, effort and cost heavily on quality initiatives which brought them quality tools and quality gurus like Deming, Juran, Ishikawa, Keizan.

As Japan continuously worked on quality initiatives, they could reach a matured level in quality and thereby their products are extremely good and reliable. Their investments are giving returns today.

How Japanese achieved quality in their products starting from small products like calculators, music players and TV to big motor bikes and cars? Accordingly, it is the time for the industry to go beyond Quality that is excellence. In project management, it is Delivery Excellence.

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QM

SQC

TQM

SPC

Qua

lity

Period in Year

1950

1960

1980

2000



5 JOURNEY TO EXCELLENCE

WHY DELIVERY EXCELLENCE?

When products have the desired quality then why delivery excellence? Is it really a matter for high quality product organizations to go for delivery excellence? It is a trivial question but one of the Japanese Organization has seen the answer for this question when their leading electronics product “walkman” has to be phased-out when Apple’s iPod came into the market. Though walkman is the highest quality product, it lost its position completely against Apple’s iPod. So what is the ground reality here? That fact is delivery excellence, which can go beyond the quality. During this period companies started looking for something beyond quality. From that time onwards movements started for “Achieving Excellence” in one or another forum:

Tom Peters and Robert Waterman were deeply involved in the movement and came out with the landmark book “In Search of Excellence”. They mentioned that organizations in every imaginable area of business, government and the social sector have been restlessly seeking the formula for success. The “excellence movement” created an appetite for management systems but still searching the process for achieving excellence.

Success of the project is no more depending on triple (Ref. Fig-2) constraint (Shenhar et al., 2002).

Fig-2: Triple Constraint - Triangle Model Fig-3: NTCP – Diamond Model

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TIME

COST SCOPE



Shenhar et al. have been reinventing project management and identified a new NTCP diamond model which talks about adaptive project management more than triple constraints. Over the years, following “movements” have started and took center stage, attracted their share of advocates and practitioners but still in evaluation stage for achieving delivery excellence.

1. Factors ensure Project Management Success – Cost, Scope, Time, Quality (triangle model)

2. Factors ensure Project Success – Customer Satisfaction (diamond model)

3. Factors ensure Organization Success – Delivery Excellence (circle model)

6 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

FACTORS ENSURE PROJECT SUCCESS & DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Sydney Opera House is one of the typical examples of Project Success but Project Management failure. As for as project management success it had 1500% over budget and 250% time overrun however in terms of Project Success Sydney Opera House turned to be an amazing success project. So project success and project management success should be distinguished clearly and defined accurately. Since 1980, many researches have been done and identified different set of critical success factors. As per G.U. Prabhkar (2008) “the only agreement seems to be the disagreement on what constitutes project success”.

Researchers like Pinto & Slevin (1989), Chua et al (1999), PMI (2004), Turner & Muller (2007), Walker et al (2004), Hyvari (2006), Khang & Moe (2008) have identified the critical success factors (Refer Table-1) that significantly determine project management success.

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Table-1: Project Success Factors

Based on the research data, analyzed and identified the below set of critical factors and criteria that predominantly ensure “Delivery Excellence” refer Table-2.

Table-2: Delivery Excellence Factors

Sl. No. Critical Factors ensure Delivery Excellence

Delivery Excellence Score Card Performance Benchmark

Planned Actual Performance

Project Level

BU Level

MindTree Level

Industry Level

Competitor Level

1 Customer Satisfaction Level 100+%

2 Employee Satisfaction Level 100+%

3 Business/ Revenue Growth 100+%

4 Effort Variance 100+%

5 Schedule Variance 100+%

6 Review Effectiveness 100+%

7 Defect Density 100+%

8 Business / Increase Profit 100+%

9 Best Practices / Innovation 100+%

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7 KEY METRICS & MEASUREMENT

MONITOR AND TRACK KEY DELIVERY EXCELLENCE METRICS

Managing critical factors is part of the process of achieving Delivery Excellence. As per Quality Management System, without measurement things cannot be managed. So Project Success and

Delivery Excellence critical success factors should be measured, monitored and tracked. Following table shows the list of metrics to be measured and monitored through productivity tools and measurement system.

As discussed in the Journey to Excellence section, metrics collection also can be done at different level. Representatives from Project Management, Project and Organization are responsible for collecting the metrics at each level. Table-3 represents the metrics related to Delivery Excellence. Delivery manager and Senior Management members are responsible for Project and Organization level metrics.

Table-3: Key Metrics List

Long Term Short Term Measures Target

Financial Growth

Increase Revenue Revenue growth % Increase

Increase Customers Number of Customers % Increase

Increase Projects Innovation: % of revenue from new projects % Increase

Customer Satisfaction

Increase Satisfaction Customer Satisfaction Level % IncreaseIncrease Referrals Frequency of referral % Increase

Increase Confidence # of project managed triple constraints within threshold limits % Increase

Improve Relationship # of commitment/milestone missed % Reduction

Learning & Growth

Increase Core Skills Training % Increase

Increase Systems Availability % Unavailable % Reduction

Internal Business Process and Quality

Increase Review Efficiency Review Efficiency % Increase

Reduce Escalations Number of Escalations % ReductionReduce Cycle Time Cycle Time % ReductionEmployee Turnover Reduce Attrition % ReductionReduce Defects Defect Density % ReductionReduce Costs Waste, Rework, Warranty Costs % Reduction

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Above list of metrics are indicative and Organization can have a modified version of metrics list based on their project and business model. Typically organization can have a Balanced Score Card with above metrics. Delivery Excellence team members should evaluate Organization project performance against industry bench mark data for scoring. Teams exceeding the bench mark performance are eligible for getting the “Seal of Delivery Excellence”

8 WAY TO DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES TO ACHIEVE DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Munns & Bjerimi (1996) identified and shared the distinction between project success and

project management success. This differentiation helped project managers

to identify the focus area and achieve success. Similarly, the distinction between achieving Quality and achieving Excellence should be

identified.

Apple is one of the organizations, who achieved Delivery Excellence by their breakthrough innovation of iPods. Apart from western countries, In India, Godrej has introduced a new Refrigerator with radio. This innovation has helped them achieving 150% revenue growth. Here Godrej has been relying on innovation to overcome the large multinational competitions in consumer durable market. Many more examples and case studies can be discussed but the inference is the same, there is a gap between the traditional way of achieving quality and excellence way of achieving Delivery Excellence.

Based on the industry experience, identified certain initiatives for moving organizations from their traditional ways to excellence ways. Following are the high level list of transformational initiatives to be performed for achieving Delivery Excellence. Gold and Diamonds are glittering after going through different paths and changes. Organizations also need to take initiative to go through the different transformation process.

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Table-4: List of Initiatives

MOVE FROM TRADITIONAL WAYS MOVE TO EXCELLENCE WAYS ACHIEVEMENT AREAS

Individual Co-Creation Innovation

Manual Process Automation Process Skill assessment, Interview, Project health, Revenue goals

Reactive Model Predictive ModelHigh Matured organization

Supply on Demand Predict Demand and Supply

Conservative/Delayed Communication Transparent/Quick Communication Open & Confident Culture,

Creative environment

Qualitative Process Quantitative Process (ensure to keep certified Developers/PMs)

Certified team manages critical projects better than others

Ability Responsibility Taking ownership to achieve Goals and Objectives

Re-Invent & Re-Create Refer best practices and lesson learnt and Re-Use

Save TIME, COST and Show value addition to customers

Wait for Survey report Predict Customer Satisfaction Capability and Maturity

Resource Pool Competency Development Centre Right Talents Availability

9 DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

BENEFITS OF ACHIVING DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Organizations with Delivery Excellence capability can reap many benefits from all angles. Partial list of benefits includes increase revenue, improve performance, increase productivity and reduce cost & time.

Unlike Quality Management, benefit of Delivery Excellence goes beyond project management level, project Level and organization level. It also spreads across present and future time period. Particularly it helps future growth of the organization. Benefits achieved through innovations and different initiatives will continue beyond the project level and will help organization growth. Partial list of Delivery Excellence key benefits are as follows.

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Project Management Level Project Level Organization LevelOn Time Customer Satisfaction Add new customersOn Budget Employee satisfaction Reduce AttritionOn Effort Meet Revenue Goals Improve ProfitMeet Quality goals Improve Productivity Reduce Cost & Time

For more clarity, Delivery Excellence benefits highlighted in Figure-4 as a calculated comparison view between two scenarios where one is before implementing Delivery Excellence Group and the next is after implementing Delivery Excellence Group in an IT Service organization.

Fig-4: Delivery Excellence Benefits Chart

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10 CONCLUSION

SEAL OF DELIVERY EXCELLENCE

Organizations have to encourage innovations and motivate employees to implement new initiatives for achieving Delivery Excellence apart from monitoring and tracking the delivery excellence key factors. Organization can effectively implement Delivery initiatives by

including subject matter experts to implement the process and award “Seal of Delivery Excellence” to eligible projects. This process should encourage teams to go for excellence, identify the innovations and share with internal and external groups like Baldrige in USA, a National Program for encouraging Performance Excellence.

Achieving Excellence process should be simple, so that everyone can achieve excellence. In such case, better to know, “what is Excellence?” Is it like climbing the Mount Everest or winning a medal in Olympic Games? How can everyone achieve? Lior Arussy, the author of the book “Excellence Every Day” says “equating excellence with heroism not only demotivates but also discourages”. So the conclusion here is to change the mindset after all “excellence is a habit not a heroic activity”.

“Everyone” is capable of achieving excellence in an organization by meeting or exceeding stakeholder expectations. Stakeholder means not necessarily limiting to customers; it can be internal or external team members.

Finally, achieving excellence should be a Daily Goal. Collective effort on the daily goal across the organization will ensure “Delivery Excellence”.

11 REFERENCE

Azim Premji - (2005), Achieving global excellence through IT, Web Ref.http://www.grass-roots.in/cache/index.php/1231

Basil Vandegriend – (2007), Achieving Excellence in Software Development, web ref.

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http://www.basilv.com/psd/blog/2007/achieving-excellence-in-software-development

http://www.grass-roots.in/cache/index.php/1231




BIS – Bureau of Indian Standards (1991), “Performance Criteria” for Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award http://www.apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/Announcements/Rajiv_Gandhi_National_Quality_Award.pdf

BNQP— Baldrige National Quality Program – (2002) “Criteria for Performance Excellence”

U.S. Department of Comme – National Institute of Standards and Technology

Retrieved from the World Wide Web: www.quality.nist.gov/bcpg.pdf.htm

Cesare Zanasi and Cosimo Rota - (2003) “Project Success Factors”, Reference from webhttp://centmapress.ilb.uni-bonn.de/ojs/index.php/proceedings/article/viewFile/45/43

Donald Chrusciel and Dr. Dennis W.- (2003) Field "From Critical Success Factors into Criteria for

Performance Excellence” (Vol. 19-4, Aug 2003) http://atmae.org/jit/Articles/chrusciel073003.pdf

Guru Prakash Prabhakar Bristol Business School, University of the West of England, “What is Project

Success: A Literature Review” International Journal of Business and Management September, 2008

Harry V. Roberts, Bernard F. Sergesketter – (1993) “Quality is Personal” – A Foundation for

Total Quality Management, The Free Press, NY, USA

History of Japanese Quality Movement, web ref. http://www.wtec.org/loyola/ep/c6s1.htm

Japan celebrates Super 30 success - Giridhar Jha - 22 Jun, 2011 Web Ref.

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http://www.wtec.org/loyola/ep/c6s1.htm

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&safe=active&sa=G&tbo=1&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Bernard+F.+Sergesketter%22&ei=wWwJTqG1LcPorAebxdS-Dw&ved=0CC0Q9Ag

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&safe=active&sa=G&tbo=1&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Harry+V.+Roberts%22&ei=wWwJTqG1LcPorAebxdS-Dw&ved=0CCwQ9Ag

http://atmae.org/jit/Articles/chrusciel073003.pdf

http://centmapress.ilb.uni-bonn.de/ojs/index.php/proceedings/article/viewFile/45/43

http://centmapress.ilb.uni-bonn.de/ojs/index.php/proceedings/article/viewFile/45/43

http://www.quality.nist.gov/bcpg.pdf.htm

http://www.apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/Announcements/Rajiv_Gandhi_National_Quality_Award.pdf

http://www.apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/Announcements/Rajiv_Gandhi_National_Quality_Award.pdf





http://in.education.yahoo.com/news/yedumailtoday/japan-celebrates-super-30-success-20110622

Lior Arussy - (2008), Excellence Every Day, Make the Daily Choice - Inspire Your Employees and Amaze

Your Customers, Printed in NY, USA. Pp. 143-153.

Murali Chemuturi and Thomas M. Cagley, JR. – (2010), Mastering Software Project Management,

Best Practices, Tools and Techniques, J. Ross Publishing, FL, USA

NTCP Diamond Model (SHENHAR, A.J., DVIR, D. 2004) web reference: http://giorgiomartorell.blogspot.com/2010/08/ntcp-model.html

Singapore Government’s “Managing for Excellence” in CPIB

CPIB - Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau,http://app.cpib.gov.sg/cpib_new/user/default.aspx?pgID=159

Super 30 - Anand Kumar, web reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anand_Kumar

Vasanthi Perumal, Abu Hassan Abu Bakar, Arman Abd Razak, Shardy Abdullah, Aidah Awang – (2010)

“Critical success factors for sustainable housing: a framework from the project management view”

Asian Journal of Management research, University Sains Malaysia, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia

Web Ref. http://ipublishing.co.in/ajmrvol1no1/EIJMRS1007.pdf

Venkat Ramasamy., Francis Gouillaet (2010): “The Power of Co-Creation”, Build it with them to boost growth, productivity, and Profits. Free press, NY.USA Pp. 38-39

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http://ipublishing.co.in/ajmrvol1no1/EIJMRS1007.pdf

http://app.cpib.gov.sg/cpib_new/user/default.aspx?pgID=159

http://giorgiomartorell.blogspot.com/2010/08/ntcp-model.html



12 Author Profile

Peter has 18+ years of experience in information technology progressing from development, project management and program management. He is currently working with MindTree, Bangalore as Associate Director.

Peter is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) from PMI, USA. He has experience in developing project management tools and identifying techniques to improve overall performance and productivity. His area of focus is achieving Delivery Excellence by using the right Tools and Techniques.

John has done degree from Thyagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai and MS from BITS, Pilani.

[email protected]

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