KennethVR

Witness the birth of IPMA-be

Kenneth van Rumste — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:26:24 +0000

IPMA-be is a nonprofit organization that unites project-, program-, portfolio managers and PMO managers and officers.

Proudly, we invite you, your management and your project related employees (project-, program-, portfolio managers and PMO managers and officers) to witness the birth of the International Project Management Association, Belgium (IPMA-be) of which you can find the birth card here.

IPMA-be is a nonprofit organization that considers it as its main mission to help organizations and their project related employees in their endeavor to improve their professionalism.

Join us in this event were you’ll be informed about the values of IPMA-be and its added value to you, your organization and project related employees.

Venue and place

The event will take place on January 30th in Evere at 17.00h.

Venue: 5^th floor, Jules Bordetlaan 160, Evere, Belgium

More information and registration at www.ipma-be.be

Program:
17.00 – 18.00 Reception
18.00 – 18.10 Introduction (IPMA-be)
18.10 – 18.25 IPMA Objectives (IPMA EU-Task force)
18.25 – 19.45 Real life stories from the field (different Organisations)
19.45 – 20.00 What does IPMA mean for you, as PM, as Organisation (IPMA-be)
20.00 – … Wine and dine

The bucket list – Designers I need your help!

Kenneth van Rumste — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:02:42 +0000

Everybody has a bucket list, a list of all things you want to do before you die, and so do I.

A few of the things for me on that list are:

go scuba diving on the Maldives
become a father, preferably a good one
buy a motorcycle when getting a midlife crisis
write a book

And the ‘writing a book’ item on the list is getting close, so close that I’m at a point where I need help on it.

The reason why no more blog posts where written, is because of all the time that was consumed by writing for my book. And what a job it is…

At the time of writing this blog post 90% of the texts are written, the book is being reviewed by colleagues and friends and I am looking at the publishing options (e-book, publisher, etc…)

So as you can see, a lot has been done already, but still some things are needed. One of those things is creating a design and that is where you guys come in.

I would like to get in contact with a student, artist or visual expressionist who is interested in working on my book and create a layout for it. In the past I have worked on the layout of websites, brochures etc but I would rather give the opportunity to for example a student that can use it as a part of his portfolio.

So I’m hoping to find someone who is interested in working with me on this or share his/here ideas and if so, feel free to contact me.

For your information:

The book that I’m writing will handle topics related to software development and leadership. It is written in Dutch, as I believe you can only write something good in your native tongue and possibly will be translated to English in a later stage.

My free book arrived on version control

Kenneth van Rumste — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 13:37:16 +0000

Free copy on “Version Control by Example”

Kenneth van Rumste — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:31:55 +0000

Take a look at this great initiative!

Eric Sink wrote a book on Version control and gives copies away for free. And this time not only an e-book version, but a real paper version!!!

So what is this book about?

This book uses practical examples to explain version control with both centralized and decentralized systems. Topics covered include:

Basic version control commands and concepts
Introduction to Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS)
Advanced branching workflows
Strengths and weaknesses of DVCS vs. centralized tools
Best practices
How distributed version control works under the hood

Featuring these open source version control tools:

Apache Subversion
Mercurial
Git
Veracity

So where to find this amazing initiative? right here.

Here are some readers feeback:

“Version Control by Example may as well be called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Distributed Version Control — it’s a concise and informative compendium that serves as both an introduction and a manual for practical usage of Mercurial, Git, Veracity, and virtually any other version control system.”

Alex Papadimoulis
The Daily WTF

“Eric covers multiple tools in lighthearted style that makes a potentially dry subject both amusing and understandable. If version control is a new tool in your programmers’ belt, this book is a great place to start.”

Ben Collins-Sussman
Apache Subversion Developer

“Version control is a critical tool in the developer’s tool chain. So it’s disappointing to consider just how few developers actually understand their version control system beyond the minimal incantations required merely to survive a day of coding at the office. Thanks to Eric Sink’s new book on the topic, this need be the case no longer.

Version Control by Example is organized well, light in tone, yet saturated with practical illustrations of not only how to choose among and use today’s most popular free version control tools, but how to do so with efficiency, understanding, and purpose.”

C. Michael Pilato
Apache Subversion Developer

Agile Connect 2011 – Software Design in the 21st Century

Kenneth van Rumste — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 10:11:50 +0000

Over the past decade or so we’ve seen important new ideas added to the mix of software design practices to help us produce better software. Design Patterns help us capture the design solutions and reveal a rationale for using them. Refactoring allows us to improve system design after the code is written.

Agile methods—and in particular, Extreme Programming—provide highly iterative and evolutionary development methods that are particularly well suited to fast changing requirements and rapidly evolving hardware and technology environments. Martin Fowler—a leading voice in understanding, honing, practicing, and promoting these approaches—offers up a suite of short talks on his recent thinking about how these design practices have changed software development.

Join Martin to explore what’s new on the horizon to support the design and development of new, more complex, interconnected systems than the world has ever known.

Check out these as well:

http://www.agilejournal.com/media-center/video-spotlight

Visualising Agile & Kanban Storywalls

Kenneth van Rumste — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:31:11 +0000

Here is a great video on Agile and Kanban in particular as well as some of the tools to use.

What can we remember from these best practices?

First thing to remember is that Kaizen is a cool Japaneze word

Are there good tools for Kanban?

Jira with Greenhopper plugin is very handy and in the meantime they have improved their tools alot. Suncorp (the company integrated Kanban based software development with Jira and Greenhopper) gives a very good overview on how to use these tools and how to finetune them in order to have the best environment to work in.

When to use Kanban?

In maintenance or support teams it would be optimal to implement.
It doesn’t make any sence to use itterations as we use them in development teams, but we need to have follow up of the tasks. You can think of Kanban as daily iterations.

A great thing to do is also to look at the option of doing ScrumBan and get the best of both worlds. Here is a great document on how both work, Scrum vs Kanban.

So what can we conclude?

It does make sense to use the ‘best of all’ to create a way of working that suites your environment best. So look at all of the available frameworks, methods and tools to create yours. (Scrum, Kanban, XP, RUP, …)

Use agile methods, or try to take a look at them. The fortune 500 companies are using these methods, so what is holding you back to start…

Kanban is great to visiualize your flow and limiting the work in progress.

Introduction to Earned Value Management (EVM)

Kenneth van Rumste — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 10:08:40 +0000

Earned value management (EVM) is a project management technique for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner. EVM has the ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a single integrated system. Earned Value Management is notable for its ability to provide accurate forecasts of project performance problems. Early EVM research showed that the areas of planning and control are significantly impacted by its use; and similarly, using the methodology improves both scope definition as well as the analysis of overall project performance. More recent research studies have shown that the principles of EVM are positive predictors of project success. Popularity of EVM has grown significantly in recent years.

So, what can we say about EVM:

It is a way to measure the amount of work actually performed on a project.
It is a way to forecast a project’s cost and completion date using historical and statistical projections.
It is a way to tell how well a project is “performing” compared to its original plan.
Given this information it is a way to forecast how well the project will perform in the future.

Before starting to dig deeper into EVM is might be better to know a bit about terminology.

What are the basic concepts of Earned Value Management?

BCWS – Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (the plan)
This contains: Authorized work, timeframe of the work and sum of the planned values also known as the baseline plan.

BCWP – Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (the performance)
This will give you an answer on the question: How much of the panned work was accomplished?

ACWP – Actual Cost of Work Performed (the cost of performance)
This is the cost to convert BCWS into BCWP.

Calculations that can be made in order to have a good view on the project’s progress:

How to calculate the Earned Value?

Take the BAC (Budget At Completion) the total budget you have for your project.
Multiply it by the Actual % complete
The result number is the EV

So if you have a project on which you wanted to spend 300.000 € and it is 50% completed,
this means that your EV = 150.000€

For a project manager the 150.000€ is the project budget that he spend so far, but for the sponsor, this 150.000€ is the value he expects to get!

By calculating the Earned Value, you can easily compare the EV, the AC and the PV and get a great overview if your project is over or under budget and on time or not.

So like in this chart below, we can see that the project is under budget and behind schedule, although the earned value was higher than the panned value at the start of the project.

How to see if you are over or under budget?

In order to know this, you need to make 2 calculations:

CPI – Cost Performance Index = EV / AC
So take your earned value and divide it by the actual cost to get the Cost Performance Index.

CV – Cost Variance
This tells you the difference between what you planned to spend and what you actually spend. So to know how much you are under or over budget, subtract the actual cost from the earned value. (kinda logical isn’t it)
CV = EV – AC

So, now what does this mean?

If your CPI is less than 1 and CV is negative, it means that the sponsor is NOT getting the money’s worth value of the project.

If your CPI is greater than or equal to 1 and CV is positive, your actual cost is lower than the earned value, which means that the project is delivering more value than it costs.

How to see if your project is on time or not?

SPI – Schedule Performance Index = EV / PV
We didn’t speak about PV before, but it is the Planned Value and calculated by taking the BAC (Budget At Cost) and multiplying it with the planned % complete.

PV = BAC * planned % completed

So, now what does this mean?

If your SPI is greater than 1, it means you are ahead of schedule and delivered more value than initially planned.

If your SPI is lower than 1, it means you are behind schedule and you are not delivering the planned value.

Conclusion:

The idea behind EVM is that you can use it to put a number on how your project is doing. By calculating all the above, you’ll have a good basic view on your project and you’ll be able to give feedback at any time to your superior.

Sources: Wikipedia & Head First Pmp: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Passing the Project Management Professional Exam by Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman

The business value of agile methods

Kenneth van Rumste — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:18:10 +0000

I’ve been reading again… this time it’s The Business Value of Agile Software Methods: Maximizing ROI with Just-in-Time Processes and Documentation by David F. Rico, Hasan H. Sayani and Saya -J. Ross Publishing © 2009 (Amazon)

What is the business value of agile methods? That is the question what the book I’ve been reading is all about… and I would only use this book if you have that exact question.

At first I wasn’t to keen on giving this book a positive review, but then if you think about it, it does very well what it was made for. Perhaps the previous books and blog posts I’ve read from some of the best speakers got me delusional and expecting the same entertainment from all writers.

So in the end I can say that this book is a very dry, theoretical overview of agile and the business aspects it covers and how to measure them.

The book can be split up in two parts.
The first part is about what agile is, what methods there are and a comparison between those methods. It’s a very objective view and they could have spiced this book up a lot by including some experiences of users or some quotes.
The Second part is about costs, benefits, ROI (Return On Investment), NPV (Net Present Value), ROA (Real Options Analysis) and how to calculated and measure all of those.

One thing I was a bit disappointed about was the methods that where chosen to compare in the book: Scrum, XP, Crystal Methods, DSDM (Dynamic Systems Development) and FDD (Feature Driven Development). Perhaps the history and experience of the writers was more in these areas, but I think Kanban and RUP are really missing in this list… On RUP I can imagine that it covers more than the others, but Kanban should definitely be in that list.

This book in my humble opinion is suitable for customers, product owners (Scrum terminology) and managers who want to know what they’re up to if a project leader comes up to them and asks if they can move from traditional development to Agile.

Eve – Game development with Scrum

Kenneth van Rumste — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 11:10:29 +0000

It is always hard to find good talks on how an implementation was done of a new tool or methodologies.

In case of Scrum I found this one on Eve, a video game for which the developers changed to Scrum.

Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Players pilot customisable ships through a galaxy comprising over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates. The star systems can contain several phenomena including moons, planets, stations, wormholes, asteroid belts and complexes.

Here is a very good presentation on how the greatest game studios create games. In this session Senior Technical Producer Aðalsteinn “Alli” Óttarsson and Lead Game Designer Noah “Hammerhead” Ward tell a tale of how CCP migrated its 3 studios on 3 continents to large scale Agile development.

Some things to remember from their story is:

release of the new extension pack was decreased to 3 months in stead of 6 months
they succesfully connected teams on 3 continents in developing this software (more then 120 developers)
MuSCoW analysis (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won’t have)

RUP – Certification of a completed course

Kenneth van Rumste — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:52:57 +0000

I’ve done a training at IBM education and received a certificate for following this course.

Of course, the value of this certificate can be questioned, but I still think it is a good thing to have. If you have been sleeping in class, you would also have received this certificate, but in case your interest field is PM, Prince2 etc, Rup might be a good addition to your portfolio.

This certificate does not say anything on your knowledge, but it is a proof that you have been in touch with the terminology, have gone trough a workshop on RUP and have seen the web application.

In my case, as I’m dealing with RUP at the European Commission, was a very good introduction and gave me good insight on the Process and what I was up to.