Online Abstracts - Page 2/3
ProMAC 2015
Examination of Role Separation and Team Formation in Software Development Leveraging Offshore Delivery
Masaki FUJIO
Leveraging offshore delivery in software development has become common. In many cases, according to the traditional waterfall development model, requirement phase through design phase is conducted by onsite team and implementation by offshore team. On the other hand, especially when verification phase comes, the role separation sometimes is not divided clearly, e.g. bug fix activities. This paper shows the actual role balance through two projects (project A and project B) that the author himself experienced. From the point of project size, duration, development methodology, technology and role separation for offshoring, both projects look similar. They adapted a same tailored waterfall development methodology, used Rational Team Concert (RTC) as their development tool to share source codes and documents, implement based on same package, and leveraged offshoring delivery for implementation. The major difference between two projects is that project A is a little bit troubled because of skill shortage of offshore delivery. According to this examination, it verifies that even though offshoring implementation phase it does not mean no needs for technical person who can implement onsite. It is because some volume of bug remains in verification phase, and some of them depend on the environment where onsite system is delivered. And this fact tends to lead the role separation conjunction. When onsite team faces the situation that offshore team does not function well, the onsite team tends to resolve the issue by themselves. Change requests have a tendency to be treated in the same way (resolved onsite by their own). This includes a risk for the team collapse. Issues and change requests processed onsite by their own are merely known by offshore team. Offshore team believes that only what they are informed is all result of their work, while onsite team works hard and feel unfair. Ironically, the more offshore team lack skills, the less the team has things to do in verification phase. Based on this acknowledgement, countermeasures will be also proposed.
Improve the Quality of Information Sharing and Communication to Avoid Problems in Software Development Projects
Yoshikazu Miyajima
Generally, water-fall software development proceeds in the process of external design, internal design, unit test, combined test and system test. In recent years, the large-scale development of a short period of time is often required, and it is common to start the external design phase in cooperation with the partner company, in addition to inside members. There are several events to be carried out before we start the project with the structure that many kind of member have mixed. First, there is a kick-off event with the customer to confirm important elements such as the schedule, process of the development, and the goal of the project. Then we have a similar event for internal members. We also write down the project plan document, and review it with related members, to share the policy of the project, detail process of development, and so on. This paper introduces an actual situation of various types of information sharing and communication in the events that generally performed at the beginning stage of software development projects, followed by the explanation of how it was possible to avoid various problems in a subsequent process, by improving quality of these information sharing and communication.
Identifying and Solving Problems in Agile Project Management: based on Examples of System Development Projects for IoT Solutions
Hiroshi Okuyama, Masami Shibuya, Kyohei Miyamoto, Shifumi Nagase
In this era of IoT, Agile methods are now being used for Cloud and Mobile system development. Handling projects often prove difficult without all stakeholders’ adequate understanding of Agile development methods due to the distinctiveness of this method compared to the conventional waterfall method. This paper will discuss the difficulties and solutions often seen in Agile project management based on examples collected from system development projects using Agile development methods for IoT solutions.
New organization approach for Complex Project / Program
Kyoji Kuroda
As the environment surrounding businesses become more complex in recent years, the number of projects having complex elements is increasing. Project managers need to manage these complex projects appropriately before they become troubled. Analyzing the causes of troubled projects will reveal certain characteristics that make a project complex, and by categorizing these characteristics one can define what a complex project is. For instance, projects that are implementing first-of-a-kind technologies or projects where multiple methodologies are used tend to become troubled as project managers cannot rely on analogy-based estimates or common knowledge of project management. As a result, project managers are left to their own intuition and experiences, leading to troubled projects. To successfully execute complex projects, a job role specifically for the Complex Project Manager (CPM) must be defined and project managers need to develop their career accordingly. Developing project managers who can lead complex projects is by no means a process that can be accomplished in a short period of time. It is nonetheless possible to create a roadmap for developing CPMs by providing project managers with hands-on experience with complex projects and strengthening their knowledge through training specifically designed for CPMs. This framework for developing project managers who can lead complex projects is important as there will be cases where not all complex deals can be filled with relevant resources due to the scarcity of such project managers. Organizations need to identify their demand and supply of CPMs – e.g. how many CPMs are required to fill complex assignments, how many new CPMs they need to have on a year-to-year basis, and how many potential project managers they have who are expected to become CPMs – and put in place a process to certify new CPMs. It is also important for the overall project health of organizations to visualize the assignment rate of CPMs and ensure certified CPMs are assigned to complex projects. The more complex a project is the more effective it is to assign a CPM from the early stage to minimize the risk of becoming troubled. In this paper, I will discuss the definition of a complex project and how organizations can develop skills of CPMs who can lead complex projects.
Extraction and trend analysis of the word "risk" in the journals and the proceedings
Daisuke Toyoshima, Yasunobu Kino, Masaaki Sato, Tom Ohno, Misako Yamauchi, Hiroshi Kuroki, Toshimasa Nakahara
To lead a project to a success, it is very important to do risk management appropriately. There are also many papers and reports about risk management that have been published in this society, and the authors think that the most of them are closely related to the problems in usual project execution, the trends in risk identification, and recent years' social requests (internal control, and ensuring security, for example). In this paper, the authors report the results by text mining analysis. The analyze subjects are 384 abstracts about risk management in the journals or the proceedings, the society of project management, from 1999 to 2014. Moreover, the authors classified them by year of publication, and divided them into 3 groups, "from 1999 to 2004", "from 2005 to 2009" and "from 2010 to 2014". The authors regarded some words of high appearance frequencies ("project", "risk", and "management", for example) as compound words ("project manager", "risk factor", and "quality management", for example) by using morphological analysis system. As a result, the words associated with risk events proved to appear a lot from 2005 to 2009, and decrease afterward. On the other hand, the word associated with risk forecasting proved to appear a lot from 2010 to 2014. These results show that the subjects of the journals and the proceedings change from risk events themselves to risk method applicability and forecasting.
A Project Management Example of Large-scale Systems Integration Project in Indonesia
Tetsuya Kusuda, Kunimasa Ota
This large-scale systems integration project, an ODA project of JICA, aims for establishing NSDI (National Spatial Data Infrastructure) Networking System of Indonesian Government. This paper reports on a project management example of large-scale systems integration project in Indonesia over three years, including various issues such as development suspension by change request, human resources planning, stakeholder management, solved by intensive communications with the customer, utilization of local subsidiary, flexible development activities and so on. Methodologically the issues are classified with three categories according to the project time line. In details, issues arising from the development in cross-cultural environment, issues related to ODA project, and issues regarding sustainability of the system are discussed. As a result, Indonesian NSDI Networking System was successfully implemented overcoming those issues. Solving the issues arising from the development in cross-cultural environment, the following two approaches are effective. Firstly recognizing the differences is the most important attitude for collaboration in cross-cultural environment. There are differences in Law, Culture, Quality, Time, etc. Based on the recognition of the differences, mutual understanding is promoted. Secondly sharing common values such as goals, priorities, etc. is the driving force to proceed with the project. Many negotiations are needed during the project. Based on the shared values, decisions in negotiations are settled. Regarding ODA related issues, especially in IT field, progress of technologies is going so fast that specifications might get too old before system’s completion. Regarding sustainability issues, strategic approaches are needed considering system lifecycle including the budget for the system operation. This is because the effect of the project will be dependent on utilization of the system although these issues are outside the scope of implementation project. In conclusions, lessons learned from the project are presented. This case study will help project managers to improve their preparedness for ODA projects especially in IT field.
Risk Management of Hybrid Cloud Configuration based on Cost-effectiveness
Sato Ryota, Shigeaki Tanimoto, Hiroyuki Sato, Atsushi Kanai
ICT systems have been investigated for achieving flexible systems configuration, systems operation cost reduction, environmental impact reduction, etc. Cloud computing has attracted attention as technology that solves these. There are two types in cloud computing. The first type is a public Cloud whom a service provider (Amazon and Yahoo! etc.) provides with cloud computing. Second type is private Cloud to whom a company applies the system of cloud computing independently. By the way, public Cloud is mentioned that there is a problem in security compared with private Cloud. On the other hand, compared with public Cloud, as for private Cloud, there is a problem in cost. Therefore, as a realistic solution, hybrid cloud attracts attention. Thus, hybrid Cloud has two advantages of Cloud. However, there is also a problem. Specifically, it is a problem of hybrid Cloud's risk management. Generally, in a company, the operation risk for managing two Cloud becomes large. Especially the problem of data management is important. As mentioned above, hybrid Cloud's risk management is an important issue for hybrid cloud introduction project. Hybrid Cloud's risk factor was extracted in our previous study. Specifically, we extracted 21 risk factors by using risk breakdown structure method. In addition, these proposed measures were proposed with the risk matrix method. However, the cost effectiveness over these proposed measures was not enough. In this paper, the cost effectiveness over these risk factors was newly deduced. So, the index of priority attachment of every proposed measures was clarified. By these, hybrid Cloud's introduction is made easy. Furthermore, it contributes to safe and secure hybrid Cloud's use.
Knowledge Transfer Support Tool for R&D Project Management
Naoshi Uchihira
In recent years, importance of project management in research and development in companies is well recognized. However, since R&D projects are diverse and carried out over long periods compared with IT projects and project management knowledge is sticky, it is difficult to establish codified project management knowledge like PMBOK. Therefore, knowledge transfer among project managers becomes very important. The authors have proposed a knowledge transfer method for R&D project management in which the framework and procedure are proposed utilizing project case database (Uchihira 2012). This paper proposes wiki-based tool for supporting knowledge transfer. Using this tool, project managers can easily browse past R&D project cases and find similar project cases. The characteristic features of the tool include browsing and awareness support mechanism based on 4 R&D project management viewpoints (technology, market, business structure, and organization) and project phases.
Actions to Build Long-term Partnerships with Clients and Project Partners - From VOC / OBM To “Fun-Fun-Fan” Activity -
Kengo Hidehira
For 20 years, our development team has been introducing international logistics systems into hundreds of clients, most of which have requested us to maintain a long-term relationship. To get partnerships, we have been working on “Voice of Customer (VOC)” and “Open Box Meeting (OBM)”, which give us useful case studies. This presentation shows how we make use of VOC/OBM to build a stable relationship of trust with clients. Now we are focusing on improving our activities for the risk of the shortage of human resources having a thorough knowledge of international logistics system. We the specialists have wide experience in our clients’ operations (Trading, Forwarding, Customs Clearance, Warehousing, Air/Sea Transporting and all others global logistics work) and share the expertise with the fixed-terms project partners, young excellent computer programmer from Asian countries are part of them. To keep clients satisfied, the point is that the experienced partners take part in our project, not once but many times. To feel our project room like home for the partners, we always try to make ideas for having some “fun”. We regard “face-to-face” and “mutual” communication as important, and we gather project members in the same room as possible. Introducing our practice, we name it “Fun-Fun-Fan” activity which means “Fun for clients, Fun for project partners, making them our team Fans”, this paper emphasizes that continuing clients and project partners as our project members for decades is the most important to build long-terms partnerships with them.
A Proposal of Slow Policy Level based on Information Security Management System
Ken-ichiro Hata, Shoichi Yoneda, Shigeaki Tanimoto, Hiroyuki Sato, Atsushi Kanai
In recent years, the Internet occupies the important position as infrastructure. However, the threat of a cybercrime is also becoming large. In this way, the importance of the information security is also increasing more and more. The organizations which obtain certification of an Information Security Management System (it abbreviates to ISMS hereafter) are increasing in number from such a background every year. However, many information leakage incidents have been still occurred. Many of these causes are depended on a human error, and it is said that about 80% of the whole is occupied. It is decided upon the strict security policy like ISMS to such a human error. Generally, if security does not perform accurate management in many cases with a difficult procedure, it has neglect and a possibility of neglectfully and eventually causing emasculation of a policy. On the other hand, the necessity for the security policy (slow policy) which thought convenience as important is proposed by limiting a security policy and strengthening physical security, such as environment. In this paper, the proposal and evaluation for realizing a "slow policy" are performed using ISMS. Specifically, cost effectiveness is used as a policy basis of selection for "slow policy" decision. Calculation of cost uses subdivision, i.e., the work-package-ized result, for each policy of ISMS. Next, a risk reduction value of being based on application of ISMS is calculated, and this value is approximated as an effect. Cost effectiveness of each policy of ISMS is qualitatively clarified by these. A policy with large cost effectiveness is selected and other policies are made to omit by complementing with physical security etc. based on these results. In this way, the slow policy which considered convenience as important is newly proposed by complementing with physical security. This contributes to safe and secure networked society.
Program Management for Enterprise IT Professional Development
Hisato Kato, Jun Honma
This paper discusses how to formalize Enterprise IT Professional Development with the Program Management Standard in order to maximize benefit and optimize resources. Professional Development is a part of HR strategy and operations where, as opposed to Management/Executive Development, provides mechanism for promoting highly-skilled professionals, possibly to an executive level. In the Enterprise IT arena, we typically divide professionals into Project Manager, IT Specialist and IT Architect based on their capability. We have been operating professional certification program for PM, ITS, and ITA for more than 20 years, but in recent years, in this fast-changing world, we are facing difficulties. Technology changes so fast: we see lots of new engagements based on Cloud, Analytics, Mobile, and Social. They are not just for IT specialists but also for Project Managers who are responsible for delivering the results. Agile programming has long been there, but recently, more and more project managers become responsible for agile projects. In a smaller, fast-paced projects, what we need is not a separate PM, ITS and ITA but a versatile IT Professional who has all of these capabilities. For years, PM programs, ITS programs, and ITA programs have been operated relatively separately, but as the boundaries between professions are blurring, silo operation is not efficient or effective. A project manager as a “Role” is not just a project manager in “Capability.” In this paper, we will formalize our past programs and experiences into five Program Management Performance domains: namely, Program Strategy Alignment, Program Benefits Management, Program Stakeholder Management, Program Governance, and Program Life Cycle Management. Then, we will discuss how we achieve optimal capability mix and shared resource pool to maximize the benefit and optimize the resources.
A Study of PMO Introduction for PBL Support Model
Takumi KAMEDA, Shigeaki TANIMOTO, Taro YABUKI, Kunihiro TAKEUCHI, Toshihiro IOI
Recently, the introductory promotion of minimum standards for graduation or active learning which the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology advocated is advanced. In connection with this, Project-Based-Learning (PBL) which is a way method of experience study attracts attention. A purpose of PBL is not only that a problem is settled. Because a learner manages a process leading to solution, the learner can learn a management skill. On the other hand, the administration of PBL demands many skills from a teacher. This is because it is greatly different from the normal learning method. Naturally a teacher needs the knowledge about the problem. Furthermore, in PBL, knowledge of the management and a skill of the support are required as well as it. On the other hand, although introduction of an example and introduction of the practice method are performed now, general solution is not fully investigated. In this article, we suggest PMO for education. It is PMO with two functions. The function is the function of the accumulation of a function of the support for the learner and a method and the result. The teacher was not able to perform enough support conventionally. This is because support depended on the management skill of the teacher because there is not a function to accumulate a method and a result. PMO makes use of accumulated knowledge. Thus, the teacher can do appropriate support. Specifically, at first PMO observes the degree of achievement of the learner quantitatively. Then, the situation carries out support based on similar knowledge. In addition, PMO has both the support that a teacher carried out and functions to accumulate about the result. Thus, PMO enables enforcement of support refined by the enforcement number of times of PBL. This suggestion provides appropriate supporting circumstances to degree of achievement. The learner was not able to even satisfy a learning effect by insufficient support conventionally. By introduction of PMO, the teacher can carry out the support that it is more effective, and is effective. We contribute to improvement of the learning efficiency and introduction promotion of PBL.
Lessons Learned from System Integration Project through the Perspective of Risk Management
Goh Onitsuka
I have carried several projects as a project manager for 10 years. The primary purpose of those projects was to improve the customers’ business or to become those business routine work more efficient. The common characteristic of those projects from system view was to add some functions to the running systems or to merge some ongoing systems to one integrated system. I think those trends are keeping in several years and more. So, I think it is useful to share those adding functions project's experiences. When we carry those system Integration Projects, one of most important perspective is Risk Management. I must decide how we take risks both positive risks and negative risks. This paper, I report my project management experiences of adding some functions to the running systems or merging some ongoing systems to one integrate system through the Perspective Risk Management.
Long-term Human Resource Cultivation and Quality Assurance in the Mainframe Hosts Organization
Susumu Funaki
Mainframe systems such as z/OS marks 50 years since the release of os360, and have supported mission critical functions in each enterprise. Such systems have many applications built by traditional languages, as represented by PL/I and COBOL, and are still running over 20 years because of the toughness. These systems are strictly required to be safe, secure, and stable, and denied to change for achievement of high quality because of the mission critical systems. Especially, component model, in which main frame system is separated from business front by placing HUB system or Wrapper system, accelerated such strict conservative trend. As a result, the program still remains original and needs to be maintained by the team organized by fixed members with special skill. Number of skilled members in mainframe, however, is decreasing for some reasons such as retirement of baby-boom generation, and we are facing difficulty in maintaining the system. At the same time, there exist lots of needs for rebuilding of programs induced by end of support for above traditional languages and SW. Consequently, the maintenance team is facing a big problem for future planning of cultivation of human resource and long-term securement of high quality. The risks of Black box that everyone can’t do maintenance the mission critical systems are increasing year by year. On the other hand, manufacturing industries over generations, traditional architecture or Japanese sake food industry for example, also faced this problem in the same way and have already overcome. Although the IT industry have a strong trend chasing the new technology, now is the time to take actions in order to cherish the systems to be protected, by looking at those successful cases. In this paper, findings from other industries are applied to our IT industry in terms of human resource cultivation and quality assurance. From the point of view of management, a key to solve the current problems is given for the teams to protect mainframe systems.
Effective Utilization of Software Verification Tools in the Software Development Fields
Kensuke Shibuya, Naoto Maeda
Utilization of software verification tools has become one of the keys to ensure the quality of software under development. Those verification tools automatically detect a wide variety of defects in software products or systems. Just one defect found in a released product may spoil good relations with customers. The verification tools enable software developers to reduce such a risk keeping cost to a minimum. However, there exist a few considerable barriers to let developers use the software verification tools: 1) education cost of software verification tools, 2) overwhelming amount of bug reports, 3) false positive bug reports (the reported bugs are not real). As there are various software verification tools and the usage and functionality is different from each other, it takes time to learn them. And as tools may report huge amount of bug reports and also it includes false positive, how to reduce analysis cost of verified result is a key point when using software verification tools. In this paper, we will discuss how to deal with problems mentioned above based on our experience and knowledge obtained through the developing and promoting our in-house software verification tool in NEC. First, we will explain a variety of software verification tools and its suitable usage. Then, we will discuss our approach of reducing the education cost and restricting the number of bug reports.
Activities for Efficiency about Migration of Development Environments to New Computing Platforms
Keigo Kashima, Rieko Shimizu, Futoshi Okada, Yosuke Yamashita
We are providing a development environment that includes middleware and development support tools to projects for improvement of the productivity and the quality in the system development. We call this development environment "Hitachi Standard Development Environment (HSDE)" in this paper. We have multiple versions of HSDE. Because support of Windows XP by Microsoft was over in April 2014, the platform of the development environment had to migrate from Windows XP to the new OS, and, their development environment also had to migrate to new one. The migration planning had to consider the situation of each project. Therefore, we had to make the migration planning of each project. When we made the migration planning, we expected the following risks. ・By the time that each project is necessary, the project cannot obtain HSDE which supported a new platform. ・Because a migration procedure of HSDE is insufficient, the development environment cannot migrate well. ・Because the questions about the migration work increase from projects using HSDE, the work of our answers increases. In order to solve these problems, we have carried out the following activities: ・We confirmed the HSDE utilization status of each project. ・We confirmed the migration time of each project using HSDE, and we coordinated the release schedule of each version of HSDE. ・We inspected the migration procedure of HSDE before providing it for projects. ・For efficiency improvement of the work of question and answer about the migration, we made the communication rules. As a result, we could provide HSDE which supported a new platform in time for the development schedules of each project.
The Importance and Significance of Enhancing Project Management: In Corporate Staff Activities for the Improvement of Enterprise Value
Rieko Tokoro, Keisuke Kusakabe
Our company has been making progress in the globalization and growth of businesses by seeking the improvement of key performance indexes (KPIs) according to the Medium-Term Management Plan. For the company, this means the accelerated diversification of stakeholders along with the accelerated demand for the speediness of actions not only in system development and product planning processes, but also in the work activities of CCOH departments (staff and marketing departments) that have been taken care of by a relatively small number of persons, as well as the growing importance of robust management skills and careful coordination. Project management can be applied not only to system development activities, but also to all other aspects of corporate activities conduct. This is because a project, in any area of corporate activities, always involves a variety of staff members and stakeholders during its lifecycle; that it to say, from the beginning to the end of the project. This article reports on our initiative to enhance project management for operational reforms particularly in the domain of staff activities that tend to become dependent upon skills and rules of thumb possessed by particular individuals and/or teams, and to preserve such skills in the form of explicit knowledge.
A study on Pair-work Optimization by Retrospective in an Agile project
Yoshifumi, Kosumi, Yoshiaki, Miyazaki, Naomi, Honda
In recent years the agile software development method has been increasingly applied to software development project to respond flexibly and rapidly to a request from business. In an agile project, it is important to provide available product rapidly. To achieve high speed and high quality, some agile practices are known by software developers. In Quality Accounting, applied to waterfall project in NEC, it is important to review design and to remove specification defect in early stage. In Agile Project, pair-work is used for removing defect in early stage. As Pair-work makes situation where two persons always design and review at the same time, agile project archives high quality as well as project with Quality Accounting. In applying pair-work to project, it is necessary to define the rule of pair-work. But the rule should be optimized as project progresses. This paper describes method of optimizing pair-work with retrospective, and the result of applying the method to real project. The result describes that it is effective to focus on the rules, such as range of application, deciding pair, design review with all members, and having a break.
A Study of applying Agile Project Management in a Support Team
Tsunefumi Watanabe
There are several similarities in support team theory and agile project management theory. They are both intend to respond to changes / ongoing customer involvement, work in prioritization, and give quick response. In support team, giving quick respond to customers’ needs is one of the competitive advantages. Prioritization is one of the powerful tools to provide best performance with limited resource. Customer expectations are intangible and it is not consistent, because the expectation is based on his/her own experience in the past; therefore it is very difficult to measure and understand. Support engineer needs to communicate with customers carefully, clarify the situation, and identify all relate issues, so he/she is able to provide the correct solution accordingly and their solution might change sometimes as the situation progresses. Support engineer tends to give different level of attention when they work on their tickets, which creates variables during the support process. Customers on the other hand expect to be treated fairly and given the same level support than others. When support’s workload is hug monitoring engineer’s output gets more difficult and it becomes the bottleneck in the team performance. Agile concept is “Team members do what traditional leaders have done” which is able to resolve this concern. Openness, commitment, and courage are the important concepts to be introduced in the support team. On the other hand, the concept of sprint or cycle in agile is difficult to implement into support team. There are different issues which cause backlog in each engineer’s work, and there are different solutions and lead time for resolving each ticket; therefore, applying agile project management to support team is essential to introduce an adjusted sprint model. This paper describes value of agile implement in the support team, and discusses the adjusted sprint model.
Proposal and Case Sutdy of the Method to Quantify the Quality of Test Case Specification
Yoshinobu Machida, Rihito Yaegashi, Tomohiko Takagi
In the development of large-scale enterprise systems in Japan, the enterprises order system integrators to develop their systems, and system integrators outsource the work of coding, unit testing and integration testing to software houses. If the system integrators cannot evaluate properly the software quality made by the outsourcing company, reworks often occur because defects to be detected in the unit testing or the integration testing are found at a later stage of the development. System integrators confirm quality reports from the outsourcing company that contain the information about test result such as the number of test cases and detected defects, but that information does not fully represent the essence of executed tests. Although the test case specification documents are delivered, it is less the content is checked strictly by system integrators. As system integrators have no time or skills to check all of the documents, they can only be checked by sampling at best. Therefore, in order to easily evaluate whether the outsourcing company has tested in accordance with the correct process, we devised a method to quantify that test cases has been created with test viewpoints and testing techniques. By using this method, it is possible to clarify the parts which are not tested sufficiently or compare quality of software made by multiple outsourcing companies. In this paper, we describe this method and verify effect and validity of the technique through the application result in the actual system development project.
Risk Quantification by Monte Carlo Simulation in Agile Project
Daisuke Tomoda, Hideaki Fujii, Kazuro Haga, Kazumichi Hirano
In agile software development, each functional feature is defined as a story and agile team starts implementation from important story. Since priority is put on implementing working stories during one iteration period, a risk of agile project that important feature is not implemented in a project period should be less than that of the traditional development approach. In actual agile projects, however, a situation that implementation does not complete during iteration often happens, which results in split of the story or implementation order change. Sometimes story implementation continues across the iterations. Such a situation should be managed as an agile project unique risk. In this paper, the authors examine whether or not traditional quantitative risk analysis is applicable on agile projects, using an example of Monte Carlo simulation. In traditional development process, the quantitative risk analysis by Monte Carlo simulation simulates the period of the project and calculates the probability of the project completion within a planned period. In agile project, since the period is fixed, it determines whether or not the stories can be realized within that period with a probability. The authors developed a simulator and examined whether or not Monte Carlo simulation can be applicable on agile projects, by running it with an assumption that estimated story points and team velocity can be given as variable factors, which follow the probability distribution. As a result, the feasibility of each story can be quantified, that is, quantitative risk analysis by Monte Carlo simulation have been confirmed to be effectively applicable on agile projects. In iteration planning, agile team can judge if any story needs to be split, or can decide implementation order of the same priority stories, by running the simulator repetitively with various conditions.
Use of Agile Scrum in Mobile Application Development
Andrew Byers
The one thing that is constant in the world of information technology is that it will change. The arrival of mobile technology is currently one of the biggest factors in that change. Fujitsu’s customers are reassessing how they engage with their consumers, and how best to provide their staff with the tools that they need to do their jobs. Whilst technology moves rapidly the methods that we use to deliver solutions have for decades been built on the idea that customers can define what they want from start of a project. These methods assume that these needs will not change as both stakeholders and delivery teams gain knowledge from running the project. The number of failed projects shows that these assumptions are simply not correct. As more and more mobile projects appear, and demand rapid turn around and flexibility during the projects life a new approach is needed. Agile methods have been created to work in just such volatile environments and would seem a perfect fit for these new technologies. Fujitsu had the chance to review the use of an agile based methodology for delivering mobile projects through an engagement with Boots in 2013/14, this paper looks at that project and the lessons learnt.
Practical Insights for Global Project Delivery
Natsuhiko Nishihara, Masaya Yasugaki
Nowadays, most papers and presentations on global project management end up with discussion about cross-cultural communications gaps. Namely, importance of face-to-face meeting, efficient communication ways considering languages and time differences, and so on. Of course, this kind of knowledge is very useful and essential for people who is engaged in Global project, but, that is the basic. This paper presents skills, mentality, and practical tips required for engineers working in Global project, from the authors' experiences engaged with Global teams in different collaboration models including Offshore development and Global project based in China. The paper covers the topics like below: - What is the requirements for a talent in Global project? - What is your value as a Japanese member in Global project? - How to gain trust and cooperation from Global team?
Kakushin: The Journey of Establishing Innovation Culture at FCI
Mridu Bala Anand
An Organization’s development cycle has essentially four phases: Conceptualization; Maintenance; Improvement and Development. As organizations transition from one phase to another, they get engaged in short term & long term planning, improving their overall operations and eventually gaining maturity over the processes/operations. Having attained the highest stage in development cycle, one of the imperative business objectives for them is to - ‘Optimize’ i.e. focus on continually improving process performance through both incremental and innovative improvements. Fujitsu Consulting India (henceforth FCI), achieved CMMI Level 5 i.e. highest level of process maturity in 2012. While the stimulus was created with the achievement, the key challenge was to ensure that the tempo is maintained & the organization consistently, not only sustains but improves over it in the longer run. Knowing the standard requirements, FCI embarked on a journey to establish a culture of continuous improvement through fostering innovations. FCI launched a formal initiative that encourages resources to ‘think differently’ so as to generate new beginnings, new discoveries, new & better ways of doing things and eventually helping the organization to save on efforts; build new competencies; create new business dimensions and above all raise the benchmark! This paper highlights the FCI journey of establishing ‘Kakushin – FCI’s Best Practices & Innovation Forum’ with an objective to make innovations a way of life at FCI.
Issue & points of attention to manage the collaborating project with universities for rebuilding the areas destroyed in 2011
Toru Yasukawa
The Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, has brought about significant damage Ishinomaki city in Miyagi. As the based in the Ishinomaki city, Car-sharing association which is to revive the local community, Ishinomaki Senshu University which focuses on IT skill person development and NTT data, started the collaborating project for the stricken area revival. This project direction was that the university students propose and execute the car-sharing business processes improvement mainly and, the volunteer members based mainly on NTT data lead and manage this project. NTT data has the practical know-how in the project management of IT system development. However, in the case of volunteer members and students proceeding the project together, there were the several issues different from a business case, such as a limited resource (manpower and budget), a remote location (between Tokyo and Ishinomaki city), a lack of skills (students don’t have the basic skills of business and IT), and keeping up motivation (gap between ideal and reality about the acquired experience). For the resolution of these issues, leveraging not only Off-shore management based on NTT data and scope management based on PMBOK but also the practice of OJT approach based on human resource development, lead the project to a successful conclusion, such as contributing the area revival and achieving student’s skills up. In this article, the original approach and achievement in the university-industry collaboration project are shared.
Standardization of Operation Design for Multiple Projects
Masahiko Murata, Yoji Machida
(Background and outline of project) The management systems were integrated in April, 2012 after 2 companies of our subsidiaries had been merged in October, 2011. However, "Management system reform project" launched in October, 2012 for problems such as "The code masters had not been integrated" and "A business process of each two companies remains" to solve them. 22 Subprojects including big and small ones was planned in parallel from October, 2012 to March,2016, and I participated in these projects as "Design and realize of the operation basis" and promoted the integration of the operation basis that had been existed to the subproject each. (Problems in project proceeding and the solution) It was necessary to do the operation design that considered the entire consistency for the stable operation after the cut over and the improvement of the operation efficiency though the operation requirement for the subproject each was there. Then, the template was made at the design stages such as "Business design and arrangement of non-function requirement", "Operation basis design", and "Operation details design" of the subproject each and I have made it common one. (Result and summary) As a result, we were able to reduce 40% of resources that are required usually when designing operation and realizing phase and the subproject each was able to be cut over without the delay. In this report, I will report our address from operation design to real operation phase and future plan highlighted with standardization of operation design.
The concept of development plan for hybrid development of agile model and waterfall model.
Masaru Katoh
Our customer in banking industry is developing a new system for managing market risk. The system is intended to be interlocked packaging products developed in the United States to systems that are already running. A part of packaged products was Customized by agile model. On the other hand the development of the existing system was done by waterfall model. The agile model improve the quality by repeating the test using actual data after determining the rough specification. On the other hand the existing system needed determined data specification by packaged products. We need to develop both systems in parallel without reworking. We did not stick to develop methods which have been carried out until now, we were studied the optimal coordination schedules the two systems can be developed together. Moreover, since it is difficult to improve the estimate accuracy of the total number of steps in the design process, during the project planning it must be taken into account that risk. This paper describes the findings, study of the such real problem and actions across the project management.
Qualitative Evaluation Technique using by Badges for Cooperative Work -On an Application of Gamification for High-performance Information System Development-
Tatsuya Inomata, Tetsuro Seki
Low quality and/or delayed completion of process output often become a cause of project failure. In previous related papers by Inomata and Seki (2014), to enhance the level of project members’ work performance, the gamification framework, which has shown many successful examples in the domains of sales business and vocational education, is introduced as project management technique. In these proposals, points and badges are employed as rewards for the short-time completion of project member’s activities. According to the proposals, to evaluate the effectiveness of cooperative work, the number of badges are decided that according to refer the qualitative evaluation guideline. But, there are no practical proposal in it. In this paper, to evaluate cooperative work, a practical evaluation guideline is proposed. In this proposal, more useful and practical High-Performance Information System Development Model that is proposed by the previous work is provided.
Project Management Approach and Functions of PMO for Cross-Border and Multiple-Party-Involved Projects
Yuki Kimura
When a company merges with or acquires other companies, IT environment as business infrastructure must be reorganized across the companies involved. Projects sometimes become highly complicated and carried out on a large scale, especially in industries where IT is strongly coupled with their core business (e.g. financial business). If a merger or an acquisition is carried out internationally, the reorganization activities are formed as a cross-border project involving multiple parties: “Business and IT" and "Buyer and Seller". The key to the success in these projects is to properly deal with their specific complexities which stem from the internationalities and the existence of various stakeholders. To overcome the situation, projects must have appropriate management methods and project organization. Moreover, robust Project Management Office that leads, manages and controls the projects across the project is inevitable. This paper suggests the project management approach and the functions and competencies that PMO should have to cope with cross-border and multiple-party-involved situation, introducing the case study of a project the author experienced. The suggestions in this paper are based on the case in Asia that ended successfully and will be helpful for project managers and the member of PMO that are going to lead cross-border projects.
Proposal on Rapid IT Integration Methodology in M&A for Midsize Companies with Cloud-based ERP and Business Management Software
Kazuki Osawa
One of the key factors of M&A is to define and prioritize synergies of their deal to achieve maximum value. Typical Cross-Border M&A in emerging countries to create market access for acquirer’s products needs rapidly launching integration. In such situations, appropriate approaches to IT integration are required because IT is generally critical criteria to realize the successful mergers. IT integration process with ERP software-as-a-service(SaaS) and our integration methodology that contains several phases like “Plan for Day one / 100 Day” and parallel tracks such as data migration, business process configuration and localizations can achieve an aggressive target date of short term merger. In this paper, we propose the Rapid IT integration methodology with an actual business case including several objective metrics.