Dear PM Advisor October 29, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

Next week I will begin planning a major new product development project of a Medical Device. Should I plan all the clinical and validation activities next week or should I wait for a couple of years when I have the actual team members present?

Eager in Mansfield, MA

Dear Eager,

While I'm sure your management would love to have you predict the future perfectly and come back to them in a month with every activity planned for this seven year project, and with the cost calculated to the penny and the end date carved in stone, we both know that this is unrealistic.

Every new product development project I worked on in the Medical Device Industry involved people coming on and off the project as their careers progressed and the companies restructured. Clinical studies changed locations and validation activities changed with new FDA regulations and new regulatory interpretations. This kind of uncertainty calls for Rolling Wave project planning.

The way this works is pretty simple. Plan the project the same way you would plan any other project. Determine the Objective, Scope, and the Deliverables level of the Work Breakdown Structure(WBS) in the usual way. Then sequence the deliverables in the WBS so that you isolate those deliverables that will be worked on during the first year of the project. Continue planning these deliverables, determining the activities, responsibilities, schedule, budget and risk for all of them.

What you are left with is a project planned to meticulous detail in the first year and a lot of deliverables that remain unplanned. You will need to go to people who know these deliverables fairly well and ask for a parametric estimate of the cost and duration of these deliverables. You will receive a range. Clinical studies for a new medical device can vary tremendously based on location, number of tests, amount of follow-up, etc. That's OK. Get the range and place that in your project plan.

Your project budget will now have a range that is made up of a bottom-up estimate of the detailed activities, plus parametric estimates of the long-range future deliverables. You quote your budget as $20 +/- $3 Million.

Your schedule will look like a partially rolled up Gantt chart with all the near-term activities opened up and the future deliverables showing up as long deliverable lines with a worst-case duration shown. If you want to get fancy you can display the duration range in MS-Project but that is a discussion for another time.

But your work is not done. One of the most stringent rules in Rolling Wave project planning is that the next six months of work must be planned to the high level of detail. So, every six months to a year, you need to reconvene the current team, (the membership will change depending on team member changes and deliverables ahead) and plan out the next few deliverables in high detail. Always try to have the next year's worth of work planned out so that you can work for six months before reconvening.

Finally getting to your answer, plan out the clinical and validation activities about a year before you are ready to do them. That way you should have your correct team and location and regulations in hand and you will be successful.

Good luck!

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Forty-sixth excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

Adrenaline surged through him, instincts took over and he sprinted for the stable door yelling at Fred to run for it. The image of what had jumped at him was seared into his mind. The hair on top of the head was smeared with dried blood. The eyes were bright red. The nose was pig-like. Hairy cheeks were smeared with fresh blood. The lower jaw stuck out from the upper, broken teeth jutting out as he snapped at Gwilym. There was blood and froth spilling out of his mouth and over the beard of the creature. The hands that had reached for him were filthy and the fingers sported long, dirty, broken fingernails. It was a man but it looked so much like a warthog that Gwilym, despite his terror, laughed inside at the local’s nickname.

Gwilym reached the stable door as he heard the stall door behind him slam open. He pushed Fred to the left, saying, “Help Siorys with the net! I’ll lead him to you!” He watched Fred swing around the left side of the stable toward the wall opening.

Gwilym stalled for a moment to ensure that the creature chased him rather than Fred. This moment allowed him to calm his jangling nerves and think about what must be done. He backed away from the door so that he would be ready to run while still able to see what he was faced with.

Arthog emerged into the light of day, and tripped over a loose rock. On all fours he charged around, blundering into stable walls and other debris. He stood and ran off to the left, not noticing Gwilym. Gwilym stooped for a rock and shouted as he threw it hard at the man. Arthog started at the shout and came right at Gwilym, ignoring the rock, which hit him in the shoulder. Gwilym stored this piece of information as he ran around the right side of the stable, away from the wall breech.

Gwilym observed Arthog’s behavior: his jaw was thrust further forward than seemed normal, he was eating raw horse, he was drooling too much and was sensitive to noise but not pain. From what he’d read, this added up to one thing: Hydrophobia. He felt better being in a castle surrounded by water on two sides.

Meanwhile, Arthog was pursuing him

Where do older workers live?

When I first saw this graph in last week's NY Times, I laughed at the stereotypical French laziness showing up. Barely 20% of 60 year-old Frenchmen work opposed to 60% of Americans. But is this, perhaps, an indication of overall unemployment rate there rather than will to work? I have my doubts since the Spanish and Portugese rates are higher but dropping with their unemployment.

I have no idea how these countries are going to maintain their social benefits while bringing in lower and lower taxes from their dwindling work forces. Greece will soon be followed by the rest of Southern Europe. The US needs to change their economic model to avoid going down the same drain.

Awesome food label

I love a good graphic and there was a wonderful article in a recent NY Times showing the author's proposed food label.



Featuring red, yellow, green and big numbers, these labels would be obvious to all consumers the relative healthiness of the foods they were buying. 

Here's how it works for four imaginary foods:

Now isn't this a lot more understandable than the horrible labels we currently have?

Really, who even reads these anymore?

Dear PM Advisor October 22, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

The Director I report to takes every project idea and goes directly to planning it. He doesn't look at the equipment limitations and mandates cost and schedule before the planning even starts.

Cautious in Alabama

Dear Cautious,

I've never met a person whose every idea is worthy of becoming a reality. And if I did, I'd suspect they were only telling me the cream of the crop and not telling me the mediocre ones that were worth considering.

In my opinion there should be a phased project approach that looks something like the Cadence life cycle.

An idea is generated and somebody spends a little time documenting it into a request for further consideration. If it is considered a good enough idea, a Sponsor is selected and the idea moves to the next phase. Here a few people join the idea generator to study it for a week or two to see if it is viable.
If so, the best alternative is selected and we move the next phase. Here we do some rigorous research on the idea and create a business case. If it survives this phase, we assign a PM and a team, plan the project and execute the work.

The process is that for every product that comes out the end of this process, two projects might be planned, four to six researched, twelve studied and twenty ideas generated. Mature project management companies go through this weeding out process to glean the best ideas out of the many.

Since little money or time is spent in these early phases, we waste little on those projects that were bad ideas in the first place.

If your company goes straight to planning every idea that is surfaced, one of two things is going wrong. Either people are extremely cautious about presenting radical ideas or you are wasting a lot of money and energy on ideas that should not reach the planning phase. Both are not good signs.

The phased approach shown above comes from Cadence but most companies I've worked or consulted for have a similar funnel that weeds out the bad ideas. Some combine the first three phases into two, some have even more rigorous early phases.

Your company needs this phased approach with clear goals for each phase. Equipment limitations should be considered in phase two when you are looking at alternatives and be resolved before you start planning.

Costs and schedules cannot be mandated before planning occurs unless you have done some early research. It is OK to develop a range of possible costs and schedules in the early phases so that the company can take these into account when deciding if the idea is worth pursuing. But this should be a RANGE that gets narrowed down as you continue to refine the idea. It is not unheard of to be within a range of +/- 20% before you enter the planning phase. But the number that is carved in stone should be developed in the planning phase with the full team present. And a mature management group will add a management reserve of ~10% for the things that go wrong while the project is being executed.



Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

No great African leaders again this year

For the third time in four years, the five million dollar Ibrahim prize for good governance in Africa was not awarded. The requirements are not too stringent:

1. Be democratically elected
2. Leave office in the last three years
3. Demonstrate excellence in office

Why is this so hard a prize to award? Let's look at some African leaders who left office in the last few years: The Arab Spring saw many dictators leave but they miss criteria # 1.

Ivory Coast's Gbagbo challenged his democratic defeat and sparked a civil war. Senegal's Wade ignored term limits and ran for a third term. Neither demonstrated excellence.

On the other hand, those leaders who missed all three criteria are making billions of dollars a year in government corruption so the prize is probably little incentive.

Dear PM Advisor October 15, 2012

Dear PM Advisor,

Communications with a stakeholder is difficult because he is overbusy. The stakeholder is higher up in the organization and is doing things without informing the PM.

Left out in Reading, PA

Dear Left out,

It looks like you have two problems, the second one being more serious.

First of all you have a high level stakeholder with whom it is difficult to communicate because he is super busy. That is pretty typical and you just need to get on his calendar on a regular basis. Find out how he prefers to be communicated to and use voicemail, e-mail, phone calls, Webinars, face-to-face visits or whatever works best. Get to know his Administrative Assistant and get on his calendar. Remember: 90% of a Project Manager's job is communication. so do your job here.

Your bigger problem is that he does things without informing you. I can read between the lines and suppose that the things he is doing is hindering your progress on the project. And, since you mention the first problem you believe the two are related. The stakeholder is doing things that affect your project that he wouldn't do if you were able to communicate to him properly.

OK, so you now know some ways to improve your communication with the stakeholder, what can you do to ensure that he stops interfering?

I've found that project stakeholders respond well to impacts. Show them the impact their decisions and actions are having on the project constraints. Are they adding to the scope or risk? Are they increasing the schedule? Are they removing resources or reducing quality? Are they adding cost? It's possible he could be doing the opposite of all or any of these.

Show him, in graphical terms, what is happening to the project because of their actions. Emphasize that you, as the Project Manager, are the focus of the project and only you know the overall impact these actions have. Ask that he run these decisions or actions through you so that you can analyze the impact before they become reality. 

This is what I mean by graphical. Make it clear which alternative he should take by using scaled arrows and few words:



Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com