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Loading ...Week 7 Status Report
The NetHope – University of Waterloo MMSc Online Project Management Survey closed on Friday Oct 26, and we have received an additional three responses for a total of twenty seven, covering sixteen Member Organizations.
The survey information from week one has been analyzed, and will be quickly re-analyzed with the additional week-2 responses. The “Survey Results Report” is due this week. At a very high level, the member organizations Project Management skills, as expected vary to quite a degree. There also appears to be a feeling across a good number of NHMO of a need for increased project planning skills. For those who have offered to be contacted, Interview questions will be emailed during the coming week, with follow up calls throughout the week. Again, the project team thanks all who have responded to date, and especially those offering to be interviewed.
Please note that the interviews this week are critical to help understand the survey responses, which is necessary for the quality of the final report, now just three weeks away.
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(2 votes, average: 9.5 out of 10) Loading ...Week 6 Status Report
The NetHope – University of Waterloo MMSc Online Project Management Survey has received twenty four responses covering fifteen Member Organizations. This included:
• 16 responses on areas of potential improvement
• 15 responses on best practices
• 13 contacts offering to provide further information
The survey information will be analyzed and those who have offered to be contacted may receive an email and/or a phone call over the next week should clarifications on their responses be required, or additional questions arise. Based on the survey information received, the team will start analyzing the results. It has been decided to keep the survey open for another week, ending Friday Oct 26, to allow NHMO the opportunity to provide further feedback as this information is critical for the final deliverable. This will push the “Survey Results Report” deliverable back to Nov 1, however as we have received excellent feedback to date, and will be phasing analyzing and clarifying this work with other tasks, it is easy and worthwhile accommodating. The project team thanks all who have responded to date.
The teleconference with Rodolfo this week provided key information the team needed to keep the Project on target and clarified its scope. The final deliverable will include a catalogue of NetHope Member Organizations’ (NHMOs’) Best Practices (BP) guidelines, which other Member Organizations (MO) can pick and modify to fit their needs. In addition, it was agreed that individual MO will be mentioned only in this table, and not in the rest of the report, which will be a generalized discussion related to areas of potential improvements, project maturity levels, and potential recommendations based on industry best practices.
Rodolfo has been invited to all remaining Saturday team teleconferences in order to help ensure best responses to questions that arise, critical due to time pressures and nature of this project (virtual and part time).
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(2 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...Week 5 Status Report
The NetHope – University of Waterloo MMSc Online Project Management Survey has been finalized and posted. This was achieved on October 10, and the survey’s deadline is Friday October 19.
The milestones related to the Survey have slipped a few days, increasing pressure on later milestones. To mitigate this as much as possible, the project team is attempting to pro-actively prepare for the future milestones where we can. One area, as an example, was preparing how we will analyze the survey results once received. This has largely been completed; however we are currently researching Project Management Maturity Models (PMMM) to help ensure we are knowledgeable in assessing this area. Depending on the results received in the surveys, additional questions may need to be asked, though we are hoping to minimize this due to time constraints.
Another key milestone achieved this week was the Project Management (PM) Plan, which is now at a very good draft stage, and will be submitted to Dr. Carr and Rodolfo on Saturday Oct 13 or Sunday Oct 14 for feedback. Rodolfo has been invited to a team teleconference to discuss both the PM plan and the Project Charter. Project Scope and expected deliverables is a specific area requiring clarification, and is required for the Project Charter, the PM Plan, and ultimately the success of the NetHope Project.
The specific point requiring clarification is if our end deliverable will be a catalogue of NetHope Member Organizations’ (NHMOs’) Best Practices (BP) guidelines which other Member Organizations (MOs) can pick and modify to fit their needs, or if it will try to go a step further in recommending a subset of BP to be applied across the NHMO as a “standard”. The two are quite different, so we would like to discuss and formally resolve this as soon as possible.
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(6 votes, average: 7 out of 10) Loading ...Team Status Report Week 4
The Project Management Plan has progressed this past week in all areas. Most significant improvements were on the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and the Time Management Plan. The Time Management Plan being implemented is effectively a one page document with a short table of the key project milestones described with fields identifying the responsible lead, start and end dates, as well as an indication of whether the milestone has been reach. All milestone end-dates are color coded and displayed on a calendar, providing an easy method to understand where the team is and where it needs to be in order to meet the projects timelines. Together with the WBS and weekly sub-team status reports which indicate milestone-related activity status (Good, Caution, Critical) and potential issues, we now feel we have a very effective planning framework. A Draft of the Project Management (PM) Plan will be submitted to Dr. Carr and Rodolfo sometime this week for feedback.
The project charter mentioned last week has been completed for review, and the survey was updated based on feedback provided by NetHope Member Organizations. The most significant adjustment to the survey was including questions that are intended to capture Member Organizations’ feelings in regard to the Agile PM principles. It may be interesting to note that the UW project team is using some of the Agile PM principles within this project. Specifically this is being done by keeping the Project Management duties light and letting sub-teams and members lead assigned activities against planned milestones. Given the size of the project, the virtual environment (covering 8 time zones) and that as students we are in effect working part time, a light approach to project management became obvious over the past couple of weeks.
The main area of caution this week is the need to get the survey posted and survey results back from the Member Organizations as quickly as possible. Given our set timeline, this is a critical path task.
