End of chapter Questions and Answers

Likelihood refers to the probability of the risk occurring. It can be expressed in percentage terms or, more practically, as either high, medium or low.

Q4 Risk actions are of two types: avoidance actions and mitigation actions. Describe the relationship between these types of risk action and where each might be employed.

Avoidance actions are designed to reduce the likelihood of a risk occurring, ideally reducing its probability to zero by eliminating it.
Mitigation actions are designed to reduce the impact of the risk if it occurs, sometimes by identifying contingency plans that can be activated. A special form of mitigation is risk transfer whereby the impact is made to fall on someone else, as is the case with an insurance policy.
In practice, both types of risk action are usually required as, even if avoidance actions are available (which sometimes they are not), they may fail and a fallback response is required.
It is also worth considering that, if the costs of avoidance or mitigation are higher than that of the perceived risk impact, a perfectly rational response may be to accept the risk.

Q5 Describe the characteristics needed in a risk owner.

To be effective in their role, a risk owner needs:

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  Sufficient information about and understanding of the risk
  
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  The resources to do something about it
  
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  The authority to take the required action.
  

Q1 Explain the difference between value management and value engineering.

Value engineering is concerned with finding the cheapest method of achieving a previously agreed objective. Value management is broader and also encompasses trying to get an agreed value for the objectives themselves.

Q2 What is meant by the term value tree?

A value tree progressively decomposes the overall goals of a project into more specific objectives that can be agreed by the project’s stakeholders. These more detailed objectives can then be used to identify and assess possible system solutions.

Q3 How can value management be used to compare different possible design solutions?

Once the bottom-level objectives for a project have been identified through such techniques as a value tree (see above), each can be assigned a value, perhaps on a scale from 1 to 10. The probable effectiveness of the possible solutions in achieving these objectives can then be assessed and summed to find out which solution offers the greatest value.

Q4 Once a project is under way, how can value management be used to evaluate proposed changes?

When potential changes to a project have been identified, value management can be used to assess the business benefit that implementing them would create and to compare this benefit with the costs of making the change. Thus, value management can supplement conventional approaches to change control.

Chapter 17 Selling the project

Q1 How would you assess the importance of sales skills to a project manager? Are they, in your view, increasing or decreasing in importance? Why do you think there is this change? Is it more important to understand selling or buying?

Opportunities arise all of the time for project managers to ‘sell’. This might be winning some new business for which the client will pay – with ‘real’ money or with an internal cross charge to the IS department. It might not be new business at all but the constant sale of customer satisfaction throughout the project. Whichever it is, it’s valuable. To put it in perspective however, it’s not the project manager’s main task; being a good salesman but a poor deliverer ‘on time, on budget and to quality’ is not a good solution.

Q2 Persuading someone to buy is a complex process. Why is this? Is the process inherently complex, or is it because so many people are involved?

Persuading is an influencing skill where you seek to get someone to agree with your proposition by demonstrating that it is what is needed. It is complex because there is never usually just one buyer. Typically a buying decision for something as significant as a systems project will involve finance people, technical authorities, the ultimate user and the project sponsor. A stakeholder analysis will probably show that there are more stakeholders, but they may not be involved in the purchase decision.
The process is complex and it involves many people.

Q3 If selling is an ‘asking process’, how could you use it to help you sell some extra functionality to a system under development?

If we use the buying cycle as a guide, we’d be asking questions about whether or not the proposed project – without the extra functionality – meets all the needs. Is everyone satisfied? Was the original functionality a safe option that we could now improve, now that it is seen more clearly? Can the unsatisfied people articulate the implications of not getting this extra functionality?
In short we’d ask about

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  The situation – no extra functionality
  
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  The problems – if nothing is done
  
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  The implications of not getting the extra functionality
  
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  The payoff or benefit from doing it, from meeting this new need.
  

Q1 Stakeholders have different interests or ‘stakes’ in a project. How can you determine where to put your management effort?

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  Identify stakeholders
  
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  Discover their criteria for success
  
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  Analyse stakeholders’ ability to affect the project according to their power and influence
  
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  Assign effort first to those with the most power and influence.
  

We all have different expectations about the outcomes of a project or a change at work. Some are very personal and secret – “I want to get a desk by the window and a new PC”, whereas some are business related – “I want to be able to satisfy customer queries in full over the phone”. The declared expectations will all be business related or have some non-personal aspect to them. Managing expectations means managing theses declared expectations towards the goals of the project and trying to ensure that your most powerful stakeholders get their personal expectations met as well.

Networking is the skill of knowing and building rapport with people who can help you in the management of your project but who are not part of the project team. Traditional management hierarchies are gradually disappearing and in flatter, decentralised organisations it helps to know different people in different departments who can give you alternative views and information, and bring influence to bear on your behalf. You’d certainly want to make sure that you had connections into all of the stakeholder groups and into Finance and HR if they were not identified as stakeholders.

Chapter 19 Managing suppliers

Q1 Describe three situations in which an IS project may need or wish to use subcontractors.

Reasons for using subcontractors include:

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  Lack of skills or resources: The organisation may not possess the necessary skills or may not have enough people with these skills, especially if it is undertaking a lot of projects at the same time.
  
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  Pressure to reduce headcount: It may be more ‘politically’ acceptable to have the work done externally – even at increased cost – than to retain people on the permanent establishment.
  
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  Relative costs: Sometimes, a subcontractor may be able to offer economies of scale and hence lower costs than with an in-house team. A very contemporary manifestation of this is to ‘offshore’ work to places such as India where highly-trained personnel are employed at much lower rates than are the norm in Europe.
  
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  Specialised skills required: The project may call for very specialist skills indeed and these may only be available from specific organisations.
  
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  Risk transfer: The organisation may wish to transfer some or all of the risk (technical or commercial) to another party.
  

The phrase ‘back to back’ means that any contract terms applied to the prime contractor are ‘flowed down’ to subcontractors. This is important as, otherwise, the main contractor may find themselves liable for things that they have entrusted to others, with no legal redress for their subcontractor’s failings.

Q3 Subcontracts often include penalty clauses to give the main contractor protection in the case of the supplier’s poor performance. Why are penalty clauses not the complete answer to safeguarding the main contractor’s position?

Penalty clauses only provide for monetary compensation to be paid in certain specified circumstances. Apart from the difficulty of enforcing penalty clauses, they seldom provide complete recompense for all the consequences of a supplier’s failure – like business loss or public damaged as the result of late delivery or poor performance of a system.

Q4 Describe four methods that can be used to monitor supplier performance.

Methods include:

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  Approval of designs: The organisation studies, comments on and finally approves designs, specifications, drawings and so on.
  
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  Progress meetings: These should be regular and/or tied to the completion of significant deliverables.
  
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  Witnessing tests: To check that subcontracted products meet their design specifications.
  
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  Receipt of goods: Formally checking goods received to ensure that they are what was ordered, in the right quantity and quality.
  
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  Checking invoices: To ensure that they are in accordance with contracts and purchase orders and that the goods or services invoiced for have been provided.
  
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  Risk management: Checking on how the subcontractor manages risk and assessing any risks that could impact on the organisation or main contractor.
  
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  Managing the customer interface: Ensuring that customers only talk to subcontractors through the organisation or main contractor.
  

Quality control of a subcontractor’s work starts with a clear, detailed and precise specification of the goods required or the services to be performed. Detailed acceptance criteria should also be agreed between the parties.

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  The ‘black box’ approach where the inputs and outputs from the product are checked to ensure that they conform to specifications; if they do, the buyer is not concerned with how the product works.
  

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  The ‘white box’ approach where not only inputs and outputs are checked but also what goes on within.
  

In addition, the buyer may wish to see that the subcontractor works within and conforms to some independent standard for quality management systems, such as ISO9001.

Chapter 20 Leadership

Q1 Refer back to the introduction and consider again the leadership challenge at the end of the section. What kind of project management would you need to deliver to have people volunteer to work on your projects?

There are four things that followers demand of their leaders. These are

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  Honesty – they must act with integrity at all times
  
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  Competence – they can do the job
  
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  Vision – goals and objectives are clear to everyone
  
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  Inspiration – there is enthusiasm and passion for the job
  

To this we might add that the project manager maintains team spirit, considers individual needs and sets high performance standards. Life is a challenge and it’s fun.

Q2 How can Maslow and Herzberg theories of motivation help you to organise your project team and the way work is allocated?
We should assume that working in an IS project team meets the first two levels of need in Maslow’s hierarchy – physiological and safety/security needs. By his or her own actions, the project manager can address needs for

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  Social interaction- is everyone part of the team. No one is left out.
  
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  Status and recognition – people are rewarded for their achievements, even if it is a simple public ‘thankyou’?
  
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  Achievement and challenging job - team members are pushed to develop and achieve greater and greater things.
  

Herzberg found that the things that motivated people were achievement, recognition, the kind of work people were given, their responsibility and advancement. These are all in the projects manager’s gift. There is the opportunity to structure the work given to team members to take advantage of the motivating forces in us all.

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  Create a climate for change. Is there a ‘burning platform’ – a situation that is so bad that people want to move from it? Or do you need to ‘challenge the process’ by constantly seeking out and proposing opportunities for improvement?
  
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  Create a vision for the future that you and everyone can share
  
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  Encourage others to work together towards the new situation
  
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  Show everyone what things could be like through the way you behave
  
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  Celebrate the successes – big and small – along the way.
  

Chapter 21 Performance management

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  Are your expectations about the quality of work clear and well understood by this team member? Is s/he new to the team?
  
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  Are there reasons that you know about that might be influencing the level of performance? Home, family, travel issues or unfamiliarity with the kind of work. Is it a question of competence or commitment?
  
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  This is a problem solving or coaching opportunity and not a disciplinary situation.
  
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  Having prepared, establish with the individual the level of performance expected, and the gap between the expected and actual performance.
  
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  Explore the reasons for the gap. Get the individual’s point of view first.
  
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  Agree actions to eliminate the gap.
  
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  Summarise with precision. Fix a follow-up review.
  

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  Is the ‘disruptive’ person really disruptive or does she just work differently? Is her preferred team role one that makes others uncomfortable with her? Is she being made the scapegoat for other people’s discomfort?
  
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  Are you giving clear leadership, being open and encouraging openness with others?
  

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  Requires use of the competences s/he already has
  
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  Includes a measure of challenge (this is where your expectations should be made clear)
  
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  Offers the opportunity to develop and for the achievement of this development to be recognised and recorded.
  

1. 
   Welcome/introductions/administrative things/agenda. Establish rapport.
   
2. 
   Open questions about education and training received. Probe business analysis qualifications – subjects covered and level.
   
3. 
   Open questions about previous jobs. How much was business analysis and how much systems analysis. Reasons for leaving.
   
4. 
   Open questions about interests, personal circumstances.
   
5. 
   Our company, the IS/IT function, our job, our expectations, and challenges.
   
6. 
   Anything you’d like to ask me? Anything you’d like to add?
   
7. 
   What happens next.
   
8. 
   Thank you and goodbye.
   

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  For people to get to know each other in a work context and understand their impact on each other
  
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  To establish some preliminary work processes and standards to get the team started
  
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  For everyone to understand the overall aims and objectives of the project and for the project manager to set his/her expectations, set the vision and set out how the team will be managed.
  

Regular team meetings will emphasise your commitment to the team and enable you to deal with team development issues as they arise.

Chapter 23 Managing the project climate

Q1 Consider a project manager with a team of 15 to 20 people: a mixture of analysts, designers, programmers and support staff. The project also uses some specialist staff on a part-time basis. How could the project manager influence the working environment of such a team so as to get the best out of them?

Q2 Conflict and stress arise naturally in IS project teams. Some people argue that a little of both is useful, but everyone agrees that too much is destructive. How could you organise your project team to minimise the destructive effect of conflict and stress?

Chapter 24 The project manager

Q1 How does the ‘vision of the project manager’ in this chapter relate to the way you see the job? Are there aspects of the job that do not appear in the vision? Why might that be?
The vision statement was written to define the feel of the job in a way that lets project managers know what is expected of them in a qualitative way. It’s not a job description view. It is not a pedestrian step-by-step approach to the job. It tries to communicate the emotion of the job. It is very personal.
The things missing are all related to the context within which the job is done. Is it a UK job, and American job, an international job, a European job – it doesn’t say.
It does however imply a good deal about the culture within which the job exists. It is goal orientated, requiring personal commitment and risk. It talks about challenge and shaping events and winning through. It is to some extent an heroic view of the project manager and this tells something of the organisation for which the vision was created and its view of the kind of project managers they wanted.
It is neither everyone’s view of the project manager nor every organisation’s view but it does illustrate how the spirit of the job can be captured in an unconventional way and communicate the enthusiasm of project management.

Q2 Consider the skills and qualities of project managers described in the ‘developmental approach’. Can you add to these? How far do you see yourself being proficient in these skills? How could you develop further?