In this study, the project situation was divided into ten categories. Every category was named by each characteristics of leadership-style. It is proposed that "accumulate contingency method" which express the current situation of project, also proposed the effective leadership process in the project management. It will be possible for project managers to behave their leadership style based on the quantitative condition of current project.

View full abstract

On IT-Solution development, Communication management for many kind of stakeholder is so important for the success. Here, An effective operation of PMBOK Communication management is studied on a point of member's motivation.

View full abstract

Conflicts occur in projects. Conflicts grow up from miscommunications which are not popular in domestic projects arise in multinational projects since multinational projects receive contributing factors for the conflicts from mismatches of culture, language, and so on. The miscommunications, however, are not easy to be found out by the project members because of a unique organization for multinational projects although the miscommunications gradually grow up to conflicts while the project implementation and are finally to be serious problems. This paper would identify the cause of the miscommunications in multinational projects between Japan and the United States. Moreover, this paper would provide a practical approach to compose the miscommunications with interlocutions and documentations.

View full abstract

Offshore development has increased in the world of IT industry. In offshore development, it is the greatest advantage to obtain a large amount of cheap man powers easily. However, project assuming the offshore includes various problems in cost/quality side. This article enumerates problems and solutions of the offshore development by a writer's real experience. Moreover, the communication which is one of the most important subject points is considered.

View full abstract

The role that the conductor of an orchestra plays is considered as the decision-maker of the whole project. "Project manager" here is used in the meaning of function that takes the responsibility of the plan and the execution of the project. Especially, I want to pay attention to the characteristic as the responsibility type organization of the orchestra. The mechanism of recognition and the problem solution of the problem in the project might be able to be clarified, and to become an effective approach. The orchestra is assumed to be one form of the project team and consideration is advanced. It is because of the idea that taking up the orchestra as an example of the project human resources management has the meaning in the following three key words. 1.Mechanism of decision making in project. 2.Composition of hierarchical organization in project. 3.Clarification and allotment of responsibility.

View full abstract

In promoting a project, we commonly face various problems we can't solve with individual knowledge and experiences in the past. Our company has a systematic structure to support projects, however it hasn't always worked effectively project members can't ask questions casually and get answers they really want. So, Our PM community set up "Rescue for SE and Project Leader" utilizing SNS as a place where engineers can assist each other. Here we introduce a case using SNS. We believe it provides an environment which enables SE to advance a project with more communication at work.

View full abstract

Fujitsu has executed a Group Mentoring intended for the project manager since 2002. This paper reports the execution and the evaluation.

View full abstract

Project management is required in human resource development services as much as in other services. Also not only technical skills as a specialist but project management skills as a generalist are required to develop in a training program for information technology engineers. We tried to add some procedures of project management in our training program for newcomers. And we also attempted to apply project management procedure in the training project operations, and tried to apply quality control techniques to evaluate and analyze the results. We had a certain improvement in training quality, and obtained a prospect that we can apply the knowledge of project management to control quality of training programs. In this paper we describe how we applied the project management knowledge and quality control techniques to our training services.

View full abstract

In our previous report, we suggested the proactive risk management process which could be identified project risks at the earlier phase by paying attention to the "Causation among risks". However, some risks that it was not considered the project situation of a certain point were identified from the actual IT-project. We improved a risk management process that is focused on the task group of the task network that might give a project the biggest influence of the risk management, and thought precision of the risk identification and risk analysis can be improved by considering "Project risk policy" (priority of QCD) which continuously changed with the progress of the project. According to CCPM (Critical Chain Project Management), it is the task on the critical chain of the task network, which might give a project the biggest influence, and the project risk can be forecasted by buffer and so on. In this report, we expand our proactive risk management process, and we suggest the innovative risk management process that can identify and analyze more precious risks by considering the risk value on changing "Project risk policy" and the buffer influenced by these risk values.

View full abstract

A project is defined as "a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result" and is characterized by "temporary nature", "uniqueness", and "progressive elaboration". Especially, "uniqueness" makes project more difficult and is the largest factor to increase the risk. However, project managers have come to be able to promote the project more effectively and safely by using the best practices obtained from huge amount of assets learned in past projects and the knowledge accumulated by an in-house organization for supporting projects, for example, standard WBS, the number of test items and defectives to be extracted at test phase, reasonable productivity index to be performed by project members, and document templates which describe what should be agreed on with the customer before starting project. This paper describes the effects of mitigating risks due to the uniqueness by using various knowledge accumulated and maintained for recognizing quick overview of the whole project and mutual visualization of the project situation by the on-site stakeholders in a case of IT project.

View full abstract

NTT Data Corporation has a banking systems business unit that supports backbone processes of financial institutions. Due to possible social impact of system failure in banking systems, the Financial Services Agency publishes a financial inspection manual and requires financial institutions to manage system risks. IT systems vendors are also requested to properly implement risk management in their system operations provided for financial institutions. We have been implementing an approach that intends to raise risk-awareness among project members in light of our view that the first step of risk management is to identity risks promptly and accurately. In this paper, we present progress of the approach and future steps.

View full abstract

Failures in project management make negative impact into business. Never to recur same type of project management failure, it is essential to analyze the root of causes of failures in project management, and take preventive actions against these failures.Therefore, we had started to share lessons-learned from project management failures across business units. At first, in order to share lessons-learned, we investigated how failures and lessons-learned are described in each business unit. We collected 65 analyzed and described lessons-learned from 31 projects in 8 business units, and re-analyzed them. As a result, we found that some of the results of cause analysis were not enough to take preventive actions against failures. Furthermore, we found that there were 5 patterns of ill descriptions of lessons-learned. We proposed common lessons-learned describing template, to analyze project management failures, to derive preventive actions against them and to share lessons-learned across business units, as considering these 5 patterns.

View full abstract

In late years even if there being it has numerical much few of the team, projects with few numbers of people of the team increase. Personnel required relief in the project middle comes to have a bigger problem while personal importance increases. I considered that I performed personnel required supply by such a project, administration effectively by utilizing ITSS. I wrote down these inspection results and a future problem by this report.

View full abstract

A project is the continuous effort of various decision makings such as Objective setting, WBS creation, Resource Acquisition, Human Resource allocation, and Countermeasure against Risk. This paper focuses on how we use 'Metacognition' which is a "Knowing about Knowing" skill in such decision making in the project and how we can improve it based on the previous study of cognitive science and the interview of the field project managers.

View full abstract

The information sharing in the effect project of I saw from I "see, becoming" it, I "see, making" it it and communication become very difficult. A project is high in the fluidity of the member in a short term, and there is this for communication between members being short. Our project had a similar problem not an exception. Therefore is "the morning gathering" that took in TPS (Toyota production method, Toyota Production System) for software development as means to solve this problem, "software かんばん", technique of 3 to be called "a feint burr" and an original action; "progress was seen, made" it it, and an application carried out "testing framework" (a test support tool of the Fujitsu development). Of information communalization, communication increase as for these actions more than expected, and making progress motivation improvement was visible, and was able to show an effect. I think that the share of the leader may happen by continuing being active as the reason why these effects are provided. I consider what changed why an action was able to show these effects in the text and want to speak a point and the mental attitude of the leader to let an action succeed.

View full abstract

Strengthening project management in the early phase of a project is an effective way to improve its profitability. A knowledge database has been developed to share and utilize useful information gathered from project managers of various business divisions in the company. In this process, knowledge from each business division is modified to be understandable to project managers of other divisions. The contents of the database are also categorized into project phases to which they should be referred. In addition, important procedures that must be done in any projects are chosen from the contents and applied to make a checklist to ensure they are executed.

View full abstract

NTT DATA SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES INC. is engaged in the development and maintenance servicing of banking systems. The banking systems are always facing risks of one error directly resulting in a serious trouble of incorrect transfers. The banking systems have already become part of the social infrastructure and are inevitably demanded to be robust and in high quality. At development sites, activities are undertaken to accomplish processes at a high accuracy by defining each work process in detail, going back to the stance of thoroughly executing basic operations. These activities and the future direction are described.

View full abstract

Continuous improvement of project processes for product developments is necessary to provide high reliable products or services for customers constantly under the global competition with severe change of business environment. For this purpose, ISO9001 audit, assessing quality management system, and process quality assurance, assessing practice level of project management rules, have performed until now. However those activities focused on either improvement of rules or that of practice level. In this paper, we propose a new process improvement method applying Quality Management System Evaluation Method that we developed. Our method guides improvement approach based on the process level of organization evaluated with our method. We applied our method to internal process improvement activities and their results show that our method achieves well results of improvement in project management process in a short time.

View full abstract

The Project Assessment Indicator (PAI) that the author proposed is now in place as a tool to assess a project quantitatively. We proposed a mathematical model for the quantitative assessment using the AHP Relative Measurement Method. In this paper, In addition to that, we set up assessment level of each category and adjust to each grades and comments using the AHP Absolute Measurement Method. We assess a project quantitatively by this method and inspect the propriety of this evaluation model. We compare the bottom up method by check list and the top down one using our new model.

View full abstract

In order to prevent project troubles or to repeat project successes, the mechanisms for project managements have been established and maintained in each business unit in enterprise. Recently, the approach extracting project management knowledge from these improved mechanisms and sharing them across business units are started. In this report, an IT system, that facilitate to collect and to share project management knowledge, is described. At first, both collecting process and using process for the project management knowledge are defined, then the obstructing issues and countermeasures against them are identified. In addition, a prototype of PM-knowledge-viewer with supporting functions such as knowledge navigation, user's evaluation, knowledge request, and case collection, has been developed.

View full abstract

In systems development, project management becomes more and more difficult, and especially it is hard to ensure quality of product due to various reasons including a wider variety of user needs, shorter project duration, greater advancement and diversification of IT infrastructure related technology. As a result, poor quality requires reworks in software processes and causes cost and schedule overruns, which often result in a problematic project. In this paper, we focus on quality control in project management as a measure to prevent problematic projects, and present implementation of our quality control method in projects in a competitive business environment, various tips and future tasks.

View full abstract

In IT system development, especially software systems development, the function of Quality Assurance (QA) is recognized as doing vital role of supervising on going project. On the contrary, in doing service businesses, there are many chaotic projects still existed, and each time QA's checking functions didn't work well. In this short article, based on my 5 years experiences as QAer in IT Company, I show a new "To Be Model of QA" and QAer's skill required.

View full abstract

In our division, in order to prevent the problem such as troubles during real operations, due to failure of the project management or delay of requirement confirmation in the upstream, we have started the third party inspection of working process (the Process QA) in addition to the conventional third party inspection of products (the Product QA). Then, through the examination how the projects with the Process QA were actually being operated, we could confirm that the Process QA was effective in ensuring quality.Furthermore, we have improved its application for the Process QA to be settled.

View full abstract

In order to improve customer satisfaction, we are implementing a company-wide quality management system (QMS). Under the QMS, sector-level PMOs apply company's policies and action plans to projects and initiate improvement activities with the aim of improving quality and eliminating failed projects. In this paper, we focus on roles of sector-level PMOs in quality management and process improvement activities and describe implementation of our internal audit system, proactive project management and risk assessment.

View full abstract

A recent technology and a surrounding environment of an industry are changing rapidly. So it is necessary to change the defined process in accordance with them. However, implementing changes and providing information to the line deparment on a timely basis have become difficult. As a problem-solving measure, our company has been strengthening the coordination with PMO staffs and developing the process control on such as a SE business flow. In this paper, I will show a result of a survey made to the line deparment about the effect of PMO on topics expected initially and the workflow to be operated as SE.

View full abstract

In the project, it is important that the project manager understands and manage motivation so that the member may create a high performance. However, the motivation management has not been established to the index and the system. In this paper, it is proposed that the motivation management using the motive dispositions in order to improve the project member's performance. And also, the establishment of the motivation management technique is tried by this research.

View full abstract

The flow of the world improves the speed more and more, and it today that has been complicated. As a result, the demand for the system development was complicated, too and short-term development came to be demanded. Therefore, the system development of a short term with and complex requirement specification project with a difficult adjustment of the old model development technique for developing the application (=water fall type development) after fixing customer's specification has increased. There is Iteration type development as a development technique to lead such a matter to the success. In this text, it introduces the device point on the introduction and the project management of the Iteration type development adopted in the system development project with a difficult fixation of the specification.

View full abstract

The number of cases where short-term development is done through necessity has increased on the site of the system development. Various methodologies and tools are important elements to lead short-term development to the success. However, the composition, the element, procurement, and the command of the organization are considered in this paper through a certain project based on regarding the author with the most important organization.

View full abstract

We have established the integrated project management for handling the multi-vender project smoothly through practices of a large-scale multi-vender project. Recently, short-term multi-vender projects are increasing, so the integration project management for 'a short-term project' is increasingly required. In this paper we introduce know-how and examinations of short-term integration projects which we have obtained from experience of short-term multi-vender projects. These short-term multi-vender projects have been managed based on the integration project management.

View full abstract

Agile development has been regarded as a special technique that has limited application area. But IBM Rational states Agile development as "coming to mainstream" and strengthens its guidance to Agile development. In there, to extend the application area as a mainstream, the best practices including the environmental actions are provided. On the other hand, a survey within IBM Japan, which was conducted as a part of study group, revealed that Agile principles are recognized to be beneficial to common development whilst degree of understanding of Agile development affects the recognition of problem. Agile development is a change of culture and consciousness, and it is related to various areas. To understand it correctly and to be conscious about problems are the pressing needs.

View full abstract

Software test process is often located as a sub-project of the software development project. Risk of test project does not necessarily have the possibility of causing the quality of product. For this reason, we should analyze the risk after relating the project risk and the product risk. In this paper, we propose the technique for risk analysis reflected the impact on product quality at risk management of software test project. And we introduce a case study using this technique.

View full abstract

Domestic SI'er is pressed for a development process and a bold change about the development technique to cope with the strong demand of the market of "a high quality, the short appointed date of delivery, the low price" for the system development. In this article, I pay my attention to a prospective "software factory" as this solution and explain the MDAD (Model-Driven Adaptive Development) architecture and the realization form to become a base realizing this. MDAD is the architecture to abstract a general idea treated by duties of a project as a UML model.

View full abstract

The Standard for Project Management Guide is under construction in the International Standard Organization as ISO21500. This Standard activity will be finished till two or three years. In this documentation, I study the Impact of the Standards, Proactive Action for the Standards by some related organization.

View full abstract

Modern PM methods are useful for most of our personal projects, while useless for the others, as their effects depend on the definiteness of the projects. Discussed here are how to position the characteristics of the personal projects on their definiteness as projects, and some examples of the effective usage of the characterization, established by Personal PM Research Group of the SPM.

View full abstract

This article discusses "Personal WBS (Work Breakdown Structure)" of magazine reporter and editor, and then shows relation between "Reporter Activities" and "Personal Project Characterization" that is now under study in the group working on personal project management.

View full abstract

This study proposes a team management system which organizes feasible teams within an organization. Feasible team is a collection of members with enough ability for the achievement of the purpose of project. Team competency is defined to evaluate ability of the whole team. The system utilizes competency evaluation and enneagram. The competency is used for the evaluation of the external aspect of a person. The enneagram evaluates internal aspect of a person. After organizing a team by the competency evaluation, this system enables to evaluate affinity among the members using the enneagram. The system is evaluated in terms of performance and operability. For operation evaluation, competency portfolio is made for various combinations of teams with different competency distributions. This shows team organization through this system is flexible enough according to those distributions. The calculation time for feasible and optimal teams to be obtained is compared. The relationship between number of competency items and calculation time is shown. Feasible team is obtained faster and calculation time remains unchanged even if the item number increases. This demonstrates this system can do the team formation effectively.

View full abstract

As the value at an IT system is evaluated by a work as its fosterer of management innovation, the technique of the plan development to take management and alignment with an IT is important for the recognition of the value of an IT system. In this paper, a method that defines the scope of the IT system to make consistency as management is suggested in the planning stage. As for this approach, a study is performed as a case by a virtual project.

View full abstract

It might be one of the difficulties of the information system integration that We must define the scope of unclear outcome. Generally We can facilitate mutual understanding by drawing, and a related person's communication based on common standards and terms. However, in the information system integration, it's difficult to promote mutual understanding between the related person because the same term has a different meaning and the different range might be shown in the same word by the type of business, business conditions, and the experience. In this paper, I analyze the gap between customer and vender generated by each phase of system construction, and report the strategy that reduces the problem.

View full abstract

The graduation study is regarded as a project that is defined nothing, except time-limit when that begins.In this report, to analyze weekly work report, described project's definiteness rises by progress of time. WBS and ToDo become detailed with project's definiteness and can be accomplished to a project according to the plan.And, showed the factor that raised the project's definiteness is event and milestone by interview.

View full abstract

Our study group is aiming to take valuable lessons of Project Management from some historical characters or occurrences. This time, I would like to report on 'Chugoku Ohgaeshi' project of Hashiba Hideyoshi which is one of the most famous occurrences in Japan's Sengoku Period (officially Azuchi-Momoyama Period). When Honnoji Incident happened near Kyoto in 1582, Hideyoshi was isolated in Takamatsu Castle in the Chugoku-Shikoku area (western part of Japan). But in the end, Hideyoshi rapidly avenged his assassinated boss, Oda Nobunaga, and opened the door for the national unification of Japan. How did he get over the difficulty and turn the tide? I considered these questions from the viewpoint of PM. I referred to a few books on this report but after all my emphasis concerning the historical character and interpretation is the one having put it on the aspect of PM.

View full abstract

The customer's requirement is summarized in RFP (Request for Proposal). The RFP is a basis of communication between customer and supplier in requirement definition, project scope definition and project planning to grasp customer's requirement. However, RFP based requirement definition sometimes leads increase work load, requirement change, requirement dissatisfaction. It is because there is a problem of lack of information of customer's requirement in RFP. Therefore the RFP should evaluate its information at the initial phase of the project and make it clear throughout the communication with customer. The study group on applying QFD to project planning proposed requirement definition method based on QFD for utilizes communication between customer and supplier. The proposed method consisted by deployment diagram and correlation diagram using RFP as an input and introduce requirement to solution, function for product, and deliverable element. As a expansion of this method, the study group discussed about the RFP evaluation and proposed the evaluation model based on the stakeholder value. In addition, we proposed utilization method of the model with less work load with morphologic analysis and apply to the real RFP evaluation.

View full abstract

Embedded Study Group has held seven meetings to discuss various topics. In those discussions, the differences between embedded projects and enterprise application system development were examined regularly. There are two major characteristics in embedded projects. One is that the team of software development has to negotiate with mechatronics or electronics team while doing the project. The other is that series products have to be developed in parallel with slight time-lag. Therefore, the management required for embedded projects are complicated. However, since enterprise application system also require several teams to work together in the same time, it is hard to say that embedded projects are totally different. I would like to go back to the origin to discuss the features and problems of embedded projects. By interviewing specialists on embedded projects, the point will be clearer.

View full abstract

Engineers with system architecture design and project management abilities are required in the field of embedded system development. In university, however, educations are mainly focused on computer science and programming; systems engineering and project management education have been disregard. We implemented educational calucurrum of System Engineering Management in Embedded System for graduate program. In this paper the course design, execution and evaluation are described.

View full abstract

A role-play training system for enhancing efficiency of education in project management is proposed and its effectiveness evaluated. The system is essentially a Web application that runs an interactive virtual project, in which each learner assumes the role of one of its stakeholders, is given a series of directions, and sends his/her responses back to the system for evaluation. It is a non-intelligent system driven by a scenario written in XML that defines the scope of the virtual project, gives information on the stakeholders, issues a series of directions to the participants, and describes how to evaluate their responses and how to run the virtual project. The results of the experiment show an about 2.5-fold improvement in productivity: The preparation time required with the proposed system was about 10 hours, whereas that with a conventional approach was 25 hours, in which a series of cue cards was distributed to all the participants in a controlled manner as it became necessary. Further, a gain in productivity in scenario development is expected since it has been made easier to debug, and fine-tune the difficulty level of, the scenario and also through recycling o scenarios.

View full abstract

The Role Playing Practice based on PBL is effective as the method of PM learning effectively in a short time. The Scenario needs reality so that Role Playing Practice is replaced to work experience and OJT. In addition, because the Role Playing Scenario which written down state transition and the practice content of the pseudo project is the education tool, the Scenario needs no contradictoriness and learning degree of difficulty adjustment. In this paper, we introduce making of Role Playing Scenario satisfying a matter, contents of the Role Playing Practice that we carried out and the result in this year.

View full abstract