SPIN - Event 2001-05-30

Improving the Processes Using a Project Focus

DATE: May 30, 2001

PLACE: Rideau Room, Sheraton Hotel, 150 Albert Street

SPEAKER: Dr. Joyce Statz, Vice President of Knowledge Management, TeraQuest

Looking at their results, many organizations realize that process improvement is necessary in order to reduce cycle time, increase quality levels, reduce cost of project work, or to make the organization a more pleasant place to work. Thus, they examine the industry models and say... "let's try a CMM-based improvement effort" or something similar. Then, the concern becomes... "how do we get started, when there's little project discipline in our organization."

Experience with improvement efforts over the last decade shows that unless project teams see a benefit quickly from the improvement work, there's little buy-in and the improvement program doesn't last long. The secret to success is doing the improvement work through the standard project activities. This presentation discusses a project-focused improvement approach, describing techniques and approaches that have worked well with a number of organizations.

Outline:

The classic problems
The classic approaches - organization-focused SPI
The Project Focused Approach

setting up a project-focused mentoring team
launching projects with a minimal set of process support
developing a minimal life cycle and minimal WBS
integrating use of appropriate tools
identifying key measures of success for the project

How to Evolve the Process Set, Project to Project
Tailoring for Project Type (size, internal/external, development/infrastructure)

Who Should Attend:

Project managers and project team members, seeking to improve their results
Process improvement teams and SEPG members, looking for ways to get project teams involved with improvement
Managers looking for effective models of improvement and project benefit

By attending this presentation you will be able to:

identify critical success factors for software process improvement programs
list initial elements to include in project launches for a given organization
identify the skills needed in mentors for the processes of a given organization
determine the dimensions for tailoring processes and project launches for the types of projects in a given organization

Speaker's biography:

Dr. Joyce Statz is Vice President of Knowledge Management at TeraQuest, where she helps employees and client organizations with process improvement programs. She coordinates development of product and service offerings which help clients to build and deploy process improvement programs, establish and use measures, and deploy tailored workshops. Joyce is a co-founder of TeraQuest, experienced in consulting and training in areas of risk management, project management, software life cycles, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) maturity models, and a broad range of product development processes.

Joyce has 15 years of experience in the design, implementation, and management of leading-edge software systems at Texas Instruments. She was a leader in evolving TI's software development and project management processes, based on SEI maturity models.

Prior to her work at Texas Instruments, she taught computer science at Bowling Green State University, and she is a founder of the Software Quality Institute of The University of Texas at Austin (SQI). She developed the curriculum for their year-long Software Project Management Certificate Program.