Faster!
Faster! Faster!
Guild Conference 2001
DeMarco • Hruschka • Lister • Robertson & Robertson
Sydney, Australia, November 28-30, 2001
ALIGNING IT AND BUSINESS TO GET RESULTS SOONER
Chances are that you are under increasing pressure today to do everything
faster. Your organization depends on information technology more than it
ever did before. It expects new and far more sophisticated technical solutions.
It wants them bigger and sooner in "web time." Over the
next two years your company will launch initiatives to speed up, streamline
and apply radical change to its current operations. And every single one
of these will rely on information technology. Your job will be to make these
new systems operational on schedules that were unthinkable only a year ago.
You know you won't be able to achieve any of this by working harder, putting
in more overtime, hiring more people, buying flavor-of-the-month new tools,
or thinking faster.
There are two kinds of acceleration that matter here: acceleration of
the business through the use of information technology, and acceleration
of the IT organization itself. Scarce resources require that we differentiate
between products that would be merely nice and those that are truly essential.
And yet, isn't it true that every new system request that you receive is
marked highest priority? Sensible prioritization can only happen with big
picture understanding. The days of managing projects in isolation are past.
Software applications, products and programs are no longer enough; today
information technology must be a core element of the business itself. The
key ability will be to synchronize and integrate entire portfolios of projects.
Your client is no longer a single person. Your products affect so much of
the business that you must now involve and manage extensive networks of
stakeholders. All of this requires the most ambitious integration of IT
and the company's lines of business. The direct result of an excellent Business/IT
partnership is the ability to accelerate the pace of change and drive your
competition crazy.
This conference will arm you with accelerating work practices such as:
- Project portfolio management
- Key project initiation
- Stakeholder relationship management
- Management of naturally occurring uncertainly in requirements
- Architectures to parlay investment and assure reuse
This conference will provide answers to questions like these:
- What is the effect of stress on the organization and what can we do
about it?
- What can I do to contain the glut of email?
- How to align the business view of requirements with the developers'
view of requirements?
- How to avoid litigation?
- How do I keep all stakeholders involved and contributing throughout
the life of the project?
This conference is about building and then maintaining an accelerated
organization. An organization that can drive change rather than react to
it. An organization that can take advantage of new opportunities and lead
in the use of new technology.
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
- IT Managers
- Project Managers
- IT Client organization managers
- Strategic planners
- Senior technical staff
THE SEMINAR INCLUDES
OVERTURE
Like the overture of an opera or stage musical, our overture session
previews the major themes of the complete opus. It shows how combining
the various session themes can lead toward effective organizational acceleration.
BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL AGILITY
Agile businesses respond to changing demands quickly and precisely.
Agile, successful businesses know when to change, neither too soon nor
too late. It is far easier to impose organizational agility as a goal than
to achieve it. Unfortunately, many of the steps we take to make ourselves
efficient, have the undesirable side effect of making us less agile. This
session demonstrates three fundamental undertakings that will lead to improved
organizational agility.
BUILDING THE RIGHT STAKEHOLDER RELATIONSHIPS
New technology combined with business ambition means than an increasing
number of people have an interest in a project. The wide range of stakeholders
includes business people, potential users of the product, technological
experts, outside organizations . . . and anyone whose world is affected
or whose knowledge is needed for the project. This talk tells you how to
find the right stakeholders and agree how and when they will participate
in the project.
SUCCEEDING OR FAILING BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Once a project is funded and staffed, we do our utmost to make it a
success. We are so determined to deliver that, in many organizations it
is nearly impossible to halt a project once it is underway. Yet there are
some worrisome patterns: massive changes to the product during development,
large cutbacks in functionality before initial delivery, even outright
system rejection by the client. In the nineties we all focused on the development
process, now we see that the project definition process deserves our full
attention in order to deliver consistent value to the
ALIGNING REQUIREMENTS: BUSINESS AND DEVELOPERS
ARE BOTH RIGHT
A business view of requirements often goes unrecognized by the developers
who are to build the product. This talk shows how IT sees the same requirements
as the business sponsors, and how to manage the necessary uncertainty of
requirements.
MANAGING A PORTFOLIO OF PROJECTS
Your organization is almost certainly conducting many development projects
simultaneously. Quite often these projects compete for the same resources
and share other interdependencies. Managing a portfolio of projects demands
more than just good project management. This session will introduce the
special issues, pitfalls, skills and techniques of the multi-project environment.
MAINTAINING STAKEHOLDER INVOLVEMENT
The challenge is to keep the stakeholders involved throughout the life
of a project. Changes to the business and technology disrupt the project
plan. Different decisions involve different sets of stakeholders. This
talk examines how to involve the people who influence each issue, and understand
and respond to their differing points of view. It also provides a bill
of rights for client and developer to facilitate a harmonious IT/business
partnership.
E(VIL) MAIL?
System building is a human task. We need to master our communication
tools. Technology is shrinking the world. At our disposal are cell phones,
beepers, GPS, palm computing and the net. Not having an email address is
the equivalent of not having a name. We are all so much more in contact
with each other than just a decade ago, or are we? Could this contact be
an illusion? Could technology be a siren song of facile communication that
actually leads to misunderstanding, frustration, isolation and paranoia?
CROSS-APPLICATION ARCHITECTURE
We can no longer afford to reinvent the wheel on every project. Commonality
in functionality and commonality in solutions and technology have to be
discovered and reused to reduce cost and time to market. This talk introduces
system architecture as blueprints for cross-application planning and development,
thus forming a foundation for an organizational system-building culture.
THE CLINIC: BRING YOUR PROBLEMS
This is a Guild exclusive. In this session we invite you to submit questions
relating to your work. The forum is open for you to discuss any problems
you might be having, to talk about directions that you might intend to
follow, or just to seek the opinion of someone who has been there before.
Guild principals will answer any questions you have, and give you the benefit
of their experiences in today's systems world.
THE CRITICAL CHAIN
Critical Chain planning is a new emerging technique. Our ability to
make accurate estimates is driven by the certainty of our knowledge about
each variable. Traditionally, people allow for uncertainty in projects
by adding huge safety buffers throughout the project plan. Task drift means
that, once allocated, the safety is always used up. The critical chain,
the longest (in time) chain of dependent steps, can be used to minimize
the wastage of safety by only allocating it where it is needed. Each task
is estimated without its own contingency; there are no safety buffers for
individual tasks, only for dependent chains of tasks. Apart from minimizing
unnecessary contingency, this gives a realistic picture of when connections
between task deliverables will take place.
DESIGNING IS DECISION MAKING
Any large scale project entails hundreds of strategic and tactical decisions.
This talk examines how to make them, what happens if you don't make them
and the limited extent to which process models can help you. Knowing when
and what to decide in a world of always faster changes is an essential
part of today's survival techniques.
COPING WITH ORGANIZATIONAL STRESS
Like overstressed individuals, overstressed organizations are prone
to increasing dysfunction and inability to move toward real, long-term
goals. Organizations today are under more stress than ever before: time
pressure, accelerating pace of change, and an almost infernal busy-ness.
This session offers a model of overstress in the organization, and specific
remedies and survival techniques.
THE SPECTER OF LITIGATION
Few IT efforts actually end up in litigation, but the possibility of
litigation casts a shadow over any ambitious undertaking. This talk demonstrates
a litigation vaccination, showing how steps taken early in the effort can
position your company well to avoid the ruinous consequences of unmet expectations.
It provides basic rules to guide you through actual litigation, should
it happen nonetheless.
FINALE
Where we bring it all together.
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