Project failure in NHS

Interesting article on BCS about reasons for project failure - based on IT projects in University College London (UCLH) in the last 3 years ...much of it is common sense really, though interesting to see that projects following PRINCE2 are more likely to succeed that those which don't....plus some useful recommendations
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.20341

Agile documentation

Interesting post on BCS blog on agile management led me to the concept of TAGRI - They Aren't Gonna Read It: http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/tagri.htm.

Some interesting thoughts of how documentation should be produced - working with the customer, to provide communication not documentation for documentation sake, writing to a good enough standard.
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm

Some of the questions posed could apply to anyone writing any kind of documentation. Interestingly, they don't advise using templates as each system is different so will require different documentation - the thinking is that the template is resource-intensive to create; the template will ask for detail which isn't always relevant but people will attempt to write something; thus reviews take longer because there's so much more information to read through.

Project failure

Article on BCS site citing reasons for project failure:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.19584

Successful IT projects in the public sector

http://www.bcs.org/upload/pdf/success-public-sector-projects.pdf

Project tips

A useful article from BCS on project triage (http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.18968), recommending that projects are monitored using a small number of key metrics, to help find the way through the mass of information often presented by project managers:

• milestone slippage
• using this information, identify delivery trends using a timeline

This only works if you select the most significant milestones.

Learning from the NHS

It's been a while since I blogged - busy with preparing for my PRINCE2 reregistration exam on Friday. Can't believe it's 4 years since I did the Practitioner exam!

Anyway, trying to catch up with what's been happening in the world for the last couple of weeks (whilst my head has been stuck in the PRINCE2 manual) and very very slowly catching up on emails!

This story came out of the BCS Newsletter today - a report on the Thought Leadership Debate on transforming health services. http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.18922

The key points made are that:

• given the pace of change is faster than our ability to learn, centralised solutions aren't appropriate and that modularity is a more realistic approach, especially as the NHS itself is modular in nature. Prof Eddie Obeng pointed out that policy makers should use this to their advantage rather than work against it. It's an interesting perspective - centralised solutions can be costly and overly generic but having said that, without some kind of central drive, what happens to interoperability?

• there is currently an over-focus on processes. I wonder if this is because of the need to use PRINCE2 methodology for managing projects which is process-driven. Although PRINCE2 does acknowledge the need to engage people, it perhaps isn't accorded the status it deserves - MSP does address stakeholder engagement to an extent but even that probably isn't enough (though have to admit haven't read the latest version of the MSP manual).

• another point made was that the end goal is improving performance - why isn't the NHS achieving this? The elements (e.g. hard working workforce, political drivers, funding) are there but there doesn't appear to be a holistic approach to pull it all together.

• some of the points made in the ensuing debate include:

1. there aren't sufficient incentives to drive change
2. there is no shared vision across the NHS - the NHS is not one organisation and doesn't have a single culture
3. one size fits all solutions won't work - some things are best done locally, some nationally - but even national solutions may need to build in the facility for local personalisation, otherwise people will develop workarounds
4. the NHS needs early adopters to help coach others (this model was used in the ESR programme)
5. we shouldn't underestimate incremental change

JISC conference

Yesterday, the annual JISC conference took place in Birmingham - as usual, a very busy day and although I caught up with lots of people, I still managed to miss some of the people I was hoping to catch up with.

3 of my projects gave demos - 3DVisA, NaCTeM and ASSERT - and it was great to see the interest in the people attending. I went along to two parallel sessions: one on the Strategic eContent Alliance and one on rapid community building. Here are my notes from both...

The Strategic eContent Alliance aims to build a common information environment, a UK Content Framework and to gather case studies and exemplars. The UK Content Framework will be launched in March 2009 and will incorporate:

• standards and good practice
• advice, support, embedding
• policy, procedures
• service convergence modeling
• audit and register
• audience analysis and modeling
• exchange (interoperability) model development
• business models and sustainability strategies

There are a number of change agents to achieve the vision of the SCA...

• common licensing platforms
• common middleware
• digital repositories
• digitisation
• devolved administrations
• service convergence
• uk government policy review
• funding

Globally, there are other incentives e.g.

• service oriented architecture
• EU initiatives
• Google and Microsoft initiatives
• Open Content Alliance etc

The SCA has also engaged an IPR consultancy and Naomi Korn gave a brief overview of the issues of working in such a content-rich world. Naomi pointed out that it has never been easier to access content and referred to a number of key developments and standards to be aware of:

• Science Commons
• Digital Libraries i2010
• PLUS
• ACAP
• SPECTRUM (collections management)
• JISC registry of electronic licences
• Open Access Licensing initiatives

Simon Delafond from the BBC talked about the Memoryshare project which enables user-generated content to be recorded against a timeframe to create a national living archive. They plan to build on this project with the SCA to create Centuryshare to aggregate content and augment with user generated content - this will be a proof of concept project due to deliver in March 2009.

Meredith Quinn talked about the recent Ithaka report on sustainability. The paper tackles some of the cultural issues to be resolved to create the right environment for sustainability. Meredith outlined the 4 key lessons from this work:

1. rapid cycles of innovation are needed - i.e. don't be afraid to try new ideas and to drop ideas which aren't working
2. seek economies of scale - e.g. Time Inc required all their magazines to use the same platform - not such an easy task to achieve in the distributed nature of HE but maybe this is where shared services come in
3. understand your unique value to your user
4. implement layered revenue streams

The rapid community building workshop focused on the Users and Innovations programme and the Emerge community which has been set up to support the programme. Given the nature of the Web2.0 and next generation technologies this programme is dealing with, it was decided early on to adopt an agile and community-led approach. It was important to avoid imposing an understanding on the community and instead build a shared understanding across the community. So 80 institutions were brought together (some 200 individuals) face to face to start to build a community of practice - from there, the community developed further in an online environment, set up using Elgg.

The programme shared the success factors for community building:

• bounded openness
• heterogenous homophily
• mutable stability
• sustainable development
• adaptable model
• structured freedom
• multimodal identity
• shared personal repertoires
• serious fun

some of which are oxymorons! This is explained a little more at https://e-framework.usq.edu.au/users/wiki/UserCentredDevelopment. The approach is based on "appreciative enquiry" coined by Cooperrider and Srivastra in 1987.

It was interesting to hear their thoughts on benefits realisation which focuses on 3 strands:

• synthesis (of learning etc)
• capacity building
• increased uptake

The programme is also planning to create an Emerge Bazaar where projects can "share their wares" and offer services. This will also promote a kind of IdeasForge to encourage new activities which might lead to new funded projects. The Emerge Online conference is next week from 23 to 25 April.

As for the keynote sessions, key points from Lord Puttnam's speech were that we shouldn't try to solve problems with the same kind of thinking that caused them and that we are only scratching the surface of what we can achieve with technologies therefore should be more ambitious and keep innovation high on the agenda.

It was good to hear Ron Cooke highlight the data problem: "...my nightmare is the “challenge of super-abundant data” - not just its life cycle, but its superfluity with the new, unprecedented increases of data through Web 2.0 and user-generated content, including academic publishing in real time, blogging without control, and the quality and reliability of data. I am also concerned about the demands of skills it places on us - critical assessment is needed to deal with this data."

I missed Angela Beesley from Wikia but am pleased to see someone has summarised the talk http://librariesofthefuture.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/15/jisc-conference-closing-keynote-speech-angela-beesley/ :-)

The SCA team have blogged the conference (far better than i have!) which you can read at http://sca.jiscinvolve.org/2008/04/15/.

The conference also saw the launch of the Libraries of the Future campaign (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/campaigns/librariesofthefuture.aspx).

Tips on avoiding scope creep

More tips from the BCS ... on scope creep including involving users in process mapping; involving stakeholders in project planning; managing risks, assumptions and issues.
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.17185

Presentation of project information

Some nice tips from BCS on presenting ad hoc project presentations and thinking of different and interesting ways of presenting updates....
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8884

Managing assumptions

An interesting post on PM Hut from last month (http://www.pmhut.com/the-biology-of-assumptions) recommends managing assumptions as part of risk management, giving the following tips:

• consider risks from a range of perspectives (brainstorm with colleagues to avoid missing key risks)
• think broadly (work with stakeholders)
• think deeply (work with colleagues at all levels in the organisation)
• document all assumptions
• keep scanning as the project progresses
• update the assumptions document

Presentation tips - learning from cognitive science

This is a fun but useful way of presenting some tips to make sure your messages are remembered:
http://io9.com/357063/how-cognitive-science-can-improve-your-powerpoint-presentations

Princelite

Just picked up on this in a story in last week's Computing (7 feb) which mentions development of a light-version of PRINCE2, recognising the fact that in IT, at least, many organisations are not really using PRINCE2 in its entirety but still want some kind of framework to follow. Am going to have to take a look at this when I have a bit more time....
http://www.princelite.co.uk/

Project steering groups

Some interesting tips from BCS pages on what to do when the Steering Group isn't working - from a corporate perspective but still useful:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.17003

Project management tips

Weekly project management tip from BCS - this week's on risk management and the need to identify risks up front as a team:
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8884

Project management resource

Came across PMLifeline - seems to have some useful bits and bobs, although a bit geared towards larger projects.
http://www.pmportal.co.uk/Default.asp

Managing delays in projects

"IT Now" (BCS) Jan 08 edition has an interesting feature by Dr Graham Oakes, "Earthquakes in the project portfolio". The article is a case study of the gaming industry and the steps taken to reduce delays in delivering games to market. A team was set up to look at the reasons for delays and identified a pattern. They came up with the idea of producing regular progress reports for management, ranking current projects by risk and working openly with project teams to share and improve the information. This encouraged a culture where status was monitored more closely and resulted in clearer milestones. There were of course some challenges to overcome - e.g. the team reviewing progress needed support so a mentoring system was put in place. Oakes concludes with "Projects can only succeed where they deal with reality. Reflection, dialogue and independent review are key tools for helping our projects keep in touch with reality".

Interestingly, the same issue also has an article by Marcus Price (Making projects fly) on techniques used by the Heathrow T5 project to avoid delays and overspending: prototyping; lean principles; iterative and agile techniques.

Project managers and Risk management

BCS has a couple of good articles on project management:

- qualities of a project manager
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.16477

- 4 reasons for proper risk management
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.16427

UPGRADE issue on project management

Has some interesting snippets, including an article on PRINCE2 and risk, as well as handy reference list
http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2007/5/upgrade-vol-VIII-5.html#contents

BCS project management articles

A couple of interesting articles on the BCS site:

Art or science? describing the key skills and competencies a project manager needs to succeed e.g. managing uncertainty, managing expectations
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.16425

What an elephant is like on making the most of project meetings http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConWebDoc.16426

Models of sustainability workshop

Yesterday, I went along to the workshop on Models of Sustainability, jointly organised by JISC and the Oxford eResearch Centre. It was an interesting workshop, with a keynote by Malcolm Read followed by presentations from eScience projects. Here are a few of the issues and ideas discussed:

• Have eScience Programme outputs reached the level of sustainability needed? How long is a reasonable length of time to expect a step change?
• Can we have generic tools given that research itself is not generic?
• How much tinkering of tools and software do researchers actually want to do?
• Although we have a culture of sharing software, there isn't the same culture of sharing data (file sharing does not equal data sharing!). The problem is not technological but cultural
• In time, will current students bring their social networking skills into research?
• What can be learned from Athens to Shibboleth move in terms of running a development programme to inform a production programme?
• Sustainability = continuing efforts, changing culture, reducing duplication, encouraging sharing and discussion, open collaboration. Must not forget the broader sustainability agenda (e.g. HEFCE shared services programme)
• The sofware engineering needs to be sound and built on a solid framework. Academia is perhaps not geared to developing robust software and middleware; funding agencies generally haven't funded software development; career progression reward for those developing software is difficult; staff recruitment and retention issues; sustainability not even on radar screen of many HEIs and most academics
• One option is the spinoff company - in this instance, it is important to establish trust between company and university. Takes time to get technology to market. The DTI/Technology Standards Board follow on is a great bridge. Keep the team together as far as possible
• The team needs a mix of scientific, domain, financial and business experience
• Sustainability depends on users but need to promote long term view (vision of integrating compute, data and collaboration is not easy for researchers in a hurry with a short term view); new ways of working takes researchers out of their comfort zones
• If you want to continue to innovate, maintaining what you have becomes more difficult – issues of scalability, competition for support. There is a tension between maintaining an infrastructure and innovating
• Sustainability lessons – work with user community; constantly innovate and deliver; develop modular easy to use software; strong promotion, personal ownership; vision - many new ideas
• Innovation has 2 strands – new technical capability, new science communities
• Is there a role for Full Economic Costing in sustainability?
• Need to get across that software and data are facilities and therefore need managing
• What is the role of institutions in helping to sustain a project?
  

Slides will be available from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_einfrastructure/modelsofsustainability