Why do we lose the steer of projects? Recently, it is getting increased to hear the failure of projects. We've even hardly heard the story of successful cases. As a matter of the fact, most of projects have been facing some failures to some extent. Projects can end up with success only by being thoroughly executed with customer's needs and strictly meeting the deadline. Whereas, the management for successful project faces diversified factors which disturb smooth execution of projects as customer's business gets expanded. As the typical countermeasure, we can consider training project managers or activating communication among stakeholders. Yet, it is of a great issue to analyze them in order to elaborate true solution. Here, I verify how to lead projects to success throughout my actual project experiences.

View full abstract

Risk management of System Integration Project has huge impact on profitability of SI business. It is the urgent issue to detect the risks in System Integration project and to take preventive or salvation measures as fast as possible. Various types of departments or units are established to detect the risks in System Integration project for managers. This paper reports methods and systems to detect the risks in System Integration projects by the departments or units as a third party to the project.

View full abstract

Although the terminology "Risk Management" is often used in various phases of IT solution projects recently, there are gaps between knowledge of Risk Management like knowledge area of PMBOK and actual cases of project performance. And the gaps are not always bridged. In this paper, how to bridge the gaps is presented by matters for discussion using actual experiences in IT system development.

View full abstract

We put the great importance on the risk management process among project management. We picked up risks which were occurred in the cases of many IT projects, and we studied them from the various aspects. We found out proactive risk management could be conducted by analyzing the "Causation among risks" of knowledge areas which is not described in PMBOK. Furthermore, we found out new risks (named "Derivation risks") may be identified as a result of implementing risk response plan, and that helps the realization of more effective risk monitoring and control. In this paper, we created "Proactive Risk Evaluation Tool (PRET) " and, we suggest the effective risk management process to be used on actual business which is considered the relationship between "Causation among risks" and "Derivation risks" as the first step of the new risk management techniques.

View full abstract

Risk management is important for success of software development projects. Not only the generation of the risk and the influence but also costs can be suppressed by doing the risk response to the appropriate time. This paper presents the procedure for deciding items of risk monitoring and time of risk response. And we propose the monitoring method using symptom when the generation of the risk factor cannot be easily observed. In addition, this technique is applied to an actual project, and we verify it.

View full abstract

Risk has various concepts and various knowledge is required of risk management. When that generates various problems, such as risk communication, it becomes difficult to carry out risk management effectively. The risk management knowledge system RiMBOK for having common concepts about risk as means to solve this problem was built. This paper introduces RiMBOK which is one of the activity results of PMI Tokyo chapter's Risk management study group, and considers problems based on experience which built RiMBOK.

View full abstract

It is required for a project's success to get transparency and high-visibility through the project life cycle. To share metrics of cost and performance in organization may have positive results such as early indications and prevention of problems. EVM (Earned Value Management) is drawing attention as a means for tracking schedule delays and cost excess of projects, and to share them. And it begins to be applied to the project management of the software development recently. Since there is a problem that originates in a contract types, a frequent schedule change and cooperation with an existing management system etc. on the site of the software development project, it is not easy to apply actually. This paper describes the problem caused and solutions when earned value is systematically applied to software development organizations.

View full abstract

In a project applied Percentage of Completion (POC) based revenue recognition method in proportion to actual costs, the revenue of that project might not be recognized properly if the actual cost is far from the earned value. To avoid this issue, it is necessary to mange the cost properly and update the cost baseline at right time during the project execution. In this paper, it is considered that when the cost baseline should be updated, referring the EAC value calculated by using the EVM.

View full abstract

We often face to the difficulty to measure the progress of software development in the upper process management such as system requirement definition process. In order to solve this problem, we attempted to divide the upper process into some fine processes and standardize them, so that each divided process has the certain planned value based on the concept of the EVM (Earned Value Management) and managers' individual feeling never affect the judge of the progress. In addition, we are evaluating the new system in the field which has a threshold to detect progress troubles in advance and automatically suggests diagnosis and countermeasure strategy. We are expecting this system brings early trouble prediction with countermeasure in regardless of managers' own discretion.

View full abstract

We are deploying software development processes across our company with CMMI-based improvements. Although the processes conformed to CMMI Maturity Level 3 are penetrated into the whole company, we could not exterminate overrun projects. Major factors of the overruns were found to be in upstream software development processes, such as proposal, estimation, and contract. Focusing on the estimation process, we developed and deployed our new standard estimation model and its application guide with practical know-how and industry-wide technologies being integrated to improve the accuracy of estimations. In this paper, we discuss the points taken into consideration when we developed these standards.

View full abstract

One of the important roles of project managers are to estimate projects' scale properly at early project phase in order to get appropriate projects' budget from their clients to carry out their projects successfully. I tried and evaluated the function point count to estimate projects' scale at early project phase. I chose and adopted two simple function point count method which proposed by NESMA (Netherlands Software Metrics Users Association). I evaluated the method using actual data and got proper function point count for the data. Therefore the estimated FP count method is useful for project's scale estimation at early phase with some prerequisite on project phase control for the software development projects.

View full abstract

In the network integration project, open systems and their open interconnection are used to realize the new network. This means that less program development is done compared with the application system development and different project management is needed for the network integration. In this paper, clarify the difference and clarify the needs for the preliminary evaluation of the system and its management to fill the gap of network system in flexibility.

View full abstract

In our division, to improve of the system developments quality, we have started "the Process QA". Before starting "the Process QA", to improve of the system developments quality, we, our QA division, examined only a product. And we'd had a lot of problems such as a lack of project management, delay of confirm a customer request. These cause much work at the end of the project, a delay of the project, a trouble after hands on the system to customer. This report shows our activity of"the Process QA".

View full abstract

I quantify quality / complexity, today when, besides, a high quality is demanded on the short appointed date of delivery of system development, and I am visible, and I measure the progress degree, and that I control quality is done with importance by doing it. There is reliability learning curve in one of the classic technique. Schematization did the obstacle number and the test number, the problem number and relations with time mainly, but lectures about the pit that I am apt to overlook at the time of an application of this curve. By this report, I mention Rayleigh-Model which is this pit, an improvement method.

View full abstract

We can get a many useful information by Quality Inspection that indicat the project situation and problem of existing in project. Therefore, the effect of the review is shown in how to use and analyze the defect data. Actually, the defect data is not so analyzed therefore ad hoc steps is taken by each developer. As a result, Incorrect Repairs has been ingected. In this paper obtain an overview of incorrect repairs in a project review in project. Especially refer to developer's human side and also mental side of Project Management area that is Problem Management and Change Management area.

View full abstract

On the public communication infrastructure systems, the total management of an organization is important to ensure that the system reliabilities are realized. As the customer's requirement has been rapidly changing and diversity, the system development has been scaled upwards. That is why the number of sections and developers participating in the project expands and the management becomes increasingly complicated in order to keep the quality and the delivery date of the product. In this situation, the organization structure of the management should be required to control and integrate the resources for development to be able to introduce a new improvement process smoothly. We know that it is important to build up the organization and mind to make a clear the basic development process and follow them in order to manage the project well. In this report we have performed about a characteristic analysis of the large-scale public communication infrastructure from our experience and studied about the organizational process improvement, which provided important input to the Project Management. As the result, we can clarify the necessity of process improvement in our organization and we have a view of the organization management implement. We introduced the result of analysis which is a guarantee of quality and a strategy of training of resources and motivated people from the organization with a strong desire for improvement that was practiced by managing a strategic project using the organizations process improvement framework which had been proposed, and we suggest the methods of evaluating a project development.

View full abstract

To exterminate failure projects, case analysis, research, and process improvement has taken place. However, there is no end to failure Project. This is a report for successfully concluded "re-Project Management for failure Project". I focus especially "Planning Process "and "Control Process".

View full abstract

Various result quality made by an IT project is easy to be generally over belonging to the person characteristics, Especially for plan of the project quality management, the system in particular and a check object or a concrete check method and evaluation standards. Because I tried to apply full use of constant metrics which followed de-facto standard and tried a type of quality evaluation from the experience that evaluated project result thing every situation continuously, I describe consideration about setting and how to lead evaluation standards.

View full abstract

It is important to establish appropriate control limits based on past performance to conduct effective quantitative quality control in software development. We defined "adjusted performance in postmortem" to promote project members to identify an assignable cause of variation. "Adjusted performance in postmortem" is the result of eliminating the assignable cause of variation from the actual performance. By using "adjusted performance in postmortem", we can eliminate the effect of outliers to set control limits at the planning phase of the succeeding projects. We confirmed the elimination of assignable causes of variation by the application of adjusted performance in postmortem by statistical analysis of the actual data collected from our postmortem reports.

View full abstract

We believe that quality of product realization process depends on "QMS (quality management system) level" and "performing level (projects' daily practices based on QMS)". Therefore, we have developed "Quality Management System Evaluation Method" that can evaluate both QMS level and performing level. In this paper, we describe the comparison analysis of evaluation results in different business domains (hardware products and software products), which are obtained by applying this method to 72 product-development projects in 9 business units. The consequences of this comparison analysis are follows: (1) Individual business units have some specific and advanced "best practices" in QMS, (2) These "best practices" could be effective for other business units. (3) The excellent performing levels are found in a few specific projects, and (4) Using this method, both average and dispersion of performing levels can be described quantitatively.

View full abstract

The approaches and outcomes of a software process innovation program are reported, which has been conducted by the group composed of two works and two subsidiary companies in Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in order to establish the whole best of software development processes in the group. This program is characterized by group-wide sharing of a standard process, a shared personnel training measure and a process quality assurance system, and establishment of a PDCA cycle in the group by using an original process assessment.

View full abstract

There is no dispute that the review is effective to improve the quality in the system development. Recently, a lot of enterprises are compiling statistics of the process performance data in the review, and they are practicing the quantitative project management (QPM) by using them. However, because the width of the process performance baseline is too large, some projects cannot use QPM still enough. Our company is improving the design process by analyzing the review result, and it has gotten good results to QPM. In this paper, we introduce importance and the effect instance according to the stratification of review result when the review result is analyzed.

View full abstract

Because projects have different characteristics such as number of project members, duration and levels of organizational process maturity depending on their sizes, when we implement software process improvement (SPI) activities in organizations with various characteristics, we need to consider specific implementation methods. In this paper, we discuss practical knowledge about SPI activities implementation methods (e.g. choosing target organizations, offering assistance) for various organizations based on our cross-functional support experiences in implementing SPI activities with different project sizes and maturity levels.

View full abstract

This paper is described A standard process for information system development iCoPS^<TM> (Information and Communication Systems), which has been established and maintained among group companies in Mitsubishi Electric Corporation since 2004. The standard process established on the basis of ISO/IEC 12207 (Software Lifecycle Process Model) and PMBOK[○!R](Project Management Body of Knowledge) in order that the members of the group companies may understand and accept as a common basis.

View full abstract

The project member admits the value of the project by the conversation, and the achievement feeling "This project succeeded" that was not able to be talked with S-QCD is obtained. In this paper, it introduces the communications technique by useful The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Herrmann-Model for the project member' s motivation recovery when the author participates in the problem project as a project manager.

View full abstract

In modern project management, it is said that Communication Management is as important as Risk Management. The project manager is required to be aware of Communication Management during the project. To rebuild the project in adversity, the project manager should reconsider Communication Management and have great determination.

View full abstract

The negotiating ability may be trained empirically. It is difficult for a person having no experiences in a practical situation to cleverly negotiate. In order to improve a negotiation skill which a project manager has to develop, we construct a model for negotiating processes and propose to apply decision making method which has consideration for human behavioral characteristics in negotiating tactics. The results of our role play practice in which students participated show that the negotiation skills is treated as more important than consciousness for role of each other.

View full abstract

As one of the important elements which influence a success and failure of a project, team management attracts attention. According to the situation of a team (namely, project team life cycle), it is necessary to change a leadership style in implementation of communication. We consider a project team life cycle that dividing into five stages is appropriate based on precedence research. We have researched suitable leadership style according to each of these stages for years. This paper reports the application result in a certain project. Furthermore, consideration points and devices which were obtained from this example are considered.

View full abstract

I have been working on upgrading or organization maturity level in our company through PMO activities. Among PMO functions, project assessment function is important in grasping a project status and taking a specific action for an improvement. An effective interviewing to PM is very important in assessing the project status. This report deals with considerations in interviewing to PM on an actual project site from a standpoint of project assessment, such as well mannered interviewing, check points in interviewing process. An effectiveness of strategic PMO activities are emphasized.

View full abstract

This paper describes an agent-based simulation model to analyze the characteristics of project management through the scale of a project (team size) and the communication efficiency among project members. Considering the communication efficiency is proportional with the project productivity, our simulation results suggest that 1) the larger, the scale of a project becomes, the less efficient the communication becomes, and 2) it is quite difficult to make the delivery period of a large scale project shorter in comparison with a small one.

View full abstract

The most important factor to lead the project to the success efficiently is the stake-holder management of "Performing organization (the enterprise whose employees are most directly involved in doing the work of the project)" of the project team members. It is nothing to say that the motivation and awareness level of the core members of the project will much affect its successful accomplishment. In addition to that, the awareness level of the project team members will be much affected by that of "Performing organization" of the members. Paying attention with this respect, based upon the grass roots activities in our division, we make consideration that the awareness to the work of the members of "Performing organization" will be affected by what in factors and how it will be improved.

View full abstract

The traditional paradigm of information processing in the managerial organization theory has acknowledged the organization as "an aggregation of individual who makes a decision". Activities of the organization have been managed through controlling members with disciplines and orders. The design of matrix organization by Galbraith also follows this paradigm. In this study the author classified the information processing activities in the matrix organization of Japan Sewage Works Agency into 16 categories and investigated. As a result of the cross analysis and the interviews, it was proved that the Japan Sewage Works Agency have changed the official communication channels in order to adapt the change in the organizational environment. The author will discuss the fact that they acknowledged the organization as "an aggregation of the member's communication" and they have managed the project effectively through the change of the communication channels.

View full abstract

It introduces the technique that uses "E-mail" and "Cake" as a technique of "Project member's satisfaction rating is obtained" straightening.

View full abstract

At present there are some problems in the management of the multi-vendor projects. They are mainly as follows: First it requires a great deal of time to share the methods of production and management. It is also easy to have misunderstandings in communication because the production procedures and the document names differ. Further, there is a gap in the interface between products and between products and applications. Finally, the performance of products varies widely, so it is difficult to maintain consistent quality. This paper considers the application of the improvement process based on the integrated project management of CMMI to the multi-vendor project.

View full abstract

Recent years when the environment which surrounds PM is still severer. As one of the frameworks supporting PM, existence of PM community is important. In this paper, through plans and implementation of PM training program, it introduces about the measure for PM community activation, and the validity of each implementation is stated.

View full abstract