Managing High Risk Projects: a Software Process Improvement Workshop June 20, 2010

This course is designed for individuals and teams seeking to reduce software project risk, improve delivered quality, and increase productivity and efficiency. Industry data clearly indicate larger projects, the primary focus of this Workshop, carry significantly greater risk of failure and experience large cost and schedule overruns. We will examine root causes and discuss how those causes relate to participant organizations.

Participants in this highly interactive hands-on Workshop will participate in a series of exercises that result in a self-assessment vis-à-vis proven Best Practices related to principal risks. With the self-assessment as context additional exercises will produce an Action Plan tailored to each participant’s situation. In particular each participant will develop an analysis of alternative defect containment strategies using models and benchmark data provided. Finding and fixing defects typically accounts for 50-70% of total software cost. These models demonstrate how a typical software organization can reduce these costs by 50% or more while reducing delivered defects by up to 75% - results best in class groups realize today.

What You Will Learn:

• Key process and product metrics and benchmarks
• Primary root causes and costs of failures (cancellations), cost and schedule overruns, and features not delivered
• Sizing and estimating Best Practices
• Project planning and tracking Best Practices
• Defect Containment strategies and Best Practices
• How to predict and measure defect containment
• How to model (forecast) the productivity and quality impact of alternative defect containment and prevention strategies
• How to build a Business Case for Software Process Improvement
• How to formulate an improvement strategy
• How to monitor “Cost of Quality” (value-added vs. non-value-added effort)
• Deployment recommendations and pitfalls – Focus on Performance, not Compliance

GARY GACK
He is a Senior Software and IT Professional with more than forty years experience in the Software area. He is currently President of the Process-Fusion.net, an American consulting and coaching company on Software and Project Management and Business Process Improvement. Founder and Manager of Six Sigma Advantage up to 2006. In the past he has worked for Information Technology Effectiveness, Howard Rubin Associates, ASG Management Systems, RMS Technologies. He is a world-renowned speaker and author of the book: “Managing the Black Hole: a General Managers Guide to Software and IT Projects”.

Official Website: http://www.technologytransfer.eu/event/987/Managing_High_Risk_Projects_a_Software_Process_Improvement_Workshop.html