Author: bea4x

Three Phases for Project Leadership Success
The article Efficient and Targeted Project Execution describes how on time and on budget execution and successful completion of complex projects can be realized. It requires clearly defined leadership process covering all people involved supported by software-based leadership systems.

Basically, the process of managing and driving project execution has three stages
- Leadership Initiation
- Leadership execution management
- Leadership Closing
Fig.: The three stages of the leadership process

1. Leadership Initiation

The execution of every project should be marked by a clearly defined initiation. Setting up the process on an intelligent, elaborate and accurately described base concept can save a considerable amount of time and money.

Initiation provides the project framework and defines the project guidelines, giving the project the actual go-ahead. A successful project start is crucial to the whole course of the project. Initiation particularly includes an exact definition and approval of the project. If the project scope including the individual goals is precisely and consistently defined, initiation is the valuable foundation enabling targeted work all daily leadership activities.

2. Project Leadership – Project Execution Management

The main phase is the actual phase where the project execution is managed. To ensure a highly efficient, proactive, and targeted leadership, it is recommended to base the leadership process on a standardized approach, a repetitive leadership process of measuring, evaluating, defining measures based on software-based project leadership system. Using both, leadership process and leadership system, has proven to significantly add to the chances of project success.

3. Leadership Closing

Every project must end with a closing phase. A deliberately scheduled closing resulting in an approved closing report avoids subsequent interventions. Apart from the closing report, the closing phase includes the acceptance by the client (e.g. customer, management), documented «Lessons Learned» and results that can be reused in next releases of the project or by other projects.

A proper closing phase is an important and highly beneficial activity in the organization’s Lifecycle Management process and discipline.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG , Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner AG develops and markets the Internet-based Leadership $ystem TimeWinner.
October 17, 2008
Advantages of Using a Project Leadership System
The articles Efficient and Targeted Project Execution describe how project leadership systems support project and portfolio managers. The following list summarizes the advantages of the use of a Project Leadership System.
- Modern project leadership systems provide fast and efficient access to all leadership information for the leadership team – from project manager to steering committee.
- All leadership information is merged into one system, making the project leadership system the central source for leadership information for all project team members.
- The project leadership system maximizes the transparency of project leadership across all activities, times and open issues. Particularly, this lays open repeated inefficiencies. Transparency is also important when project leaders change; for Handover it saves time and money.
- Standardized, tool-supported and tool-enforced processes improve the attention of all people involved in and responsible for leadership and simplify the leadership task of driving execution.
- Intelligent interfaces allow relevant leadership data (e.g. master plans from MS Project or Open Workbench) to be imported into the leadership system.
- By using the possibility to connect leadership information and to define causal relationships, significant leadership scenarios or parameters can be traced back to the sources – a perfect instrument for modern risk management and internal control system.
- Formalized, documented and precise sources in the leadership system, make statements more reliable and secure. Project leaders are able to make precise statements referring to possible requests.
- All information is immediately indexed and permanently recorded. Redundancy is avoided.
About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG in Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner develops and sells Internet-based Leadership System TimeWinner.
October 16, 2008
Happy Birthday beteo ALM Experts Blog
On Oct. 8, 2008 beteo Blog celebrated its first birthday. In the first year of beteo Blog a lot has happened.

As a company we were able to win interesting Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) projects with reputable customers in the German speaking area allowing us to intensify our core subject activities. The experience we gained in our projects is continuously reflected in our blog. Like that it is developing into an experts platform discussing subjects related to beteo practices:
- Application Change and Transport Management
- Application Quality Management & Test
- Application Impact Analysis and Configuration Management
beteo business Blog in German und English targets at actively enhancing communication with customers, partners, and experts. At present, it comprises more than 100 specialized articles as well as three Software Miniguides and is read more than 300 times a day.

Some of the articles are real “bestsellers” and have even been published by the printed press.
Well-known experts considerably contribute to inspiring our discussions and enhancing the scope of our subject. New authors who have joined us in the last few months are:
- Klaus Otto, Sales Manager Commercial Accounts, HP Software Germany
- Fritz Mosonyi, Senior Consultant, SPP Vienna
- Dr. Michael Loebbert, Coach & Management Consultant
- Robert Sutz, Business Manager, TimeWinner AG, Switzerland
- Gerd Fladrich, Test Management Expert, Fladrich Consulting, Munich
Step by step, we are getting closer to our goal to create a platform for a global exchange of information concerning an efficient application lifecycle management.

We are looking forward to your contribution to making beteo blogs a success, no matter if you are an interested reader, subscriber, author, or an opinion leader.

Let’s beteo – let’s be excellent to each other!

What do you wish for/from beteo Blog for its second year of life?
October 9, 2008
Efficient and Targeted Project Execution (Part 2)

To support project and portfolio managers in their daily management of project execution work, Leadership Systems are used more and more frequently. Modern Project Leadership Systems offer predefined project execution processes which support the activities and decisions of the leadership team. In addition, they allow all relevant information (requests, decisions, risks, provisions, changes) to be centrally stored, contextually interrelated and preprocessed to support information needs of different steakholders.

Leadership System – Core Features

The most significant benefit of a Project Leadership System comes from mapping, complementing and supporting the leadership work. This includes all project tasks during the different phases, from efficient initiation, to complete documentation, to closure. Providing a basis for leadership, the Project Leadership System stores all leadership-relevant information including milestones (e.g. imported via an interface from MS Project), or goals and execution management cycles.

In the process of running the execution of a project, coping with an awful lot of decisions, provisions, changes, risk assessments and notes is one of the leadership team´s tasks. The total of this information is not only stored in the Project Leadership System, but also indexed. So causal and restricting relations are recognized and visualized, resulting in reliable statements as to the target and result scores.

From Leadership Meeting Support to Risk Management

The range of features of a Project Leadership System covers all phases from the support of leadership meetings, active change management, progress quantification, conclusive reporting, uninterrupted documentation, traceability of the leading activities, up to a sophisticated risk management.

Proactive risk management is gaining importance. Regulations have come into effect which call on enterprises to improve risk management and establish „internal control systems“. Such legal instructions can be comprehensively met by a Leadership System.

Can Leadership be Quantified?

Where is the project right now? What about target and result scores? Quantification is a significant factor in project leadership work. But can leadership be quantified? Modern Project Leadership Systems prove it! They include features offering business management and portfolio managers a variety of alternatives for assessing and comparing. They allow the definition of project leadership parameters relating to quantifiable criteria such as progress, cost, performance, motivation, and change management. Cross-enterprise benchmarking of project execution management is enabled.

Project Leadership Systems – Summary

A Project Leadership System is not only able to map the complete process of running a project or project plan to a single system, but supports all people involved in leadership with automated processes comprehensively, directly and flexibly. The resulting significant work relief and time saving can easily be verified. In addition to an increase in efficiency and project information value, there is more time to focus on the essential: the proactive, targeted leadership of a project.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG in Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner develops and sells Internet-based Leadership System TimeWinner.

October 7, 2008
Efficient and Targeted Project Execution (Part 1)

In order to meet time and budget requirements in complex projects and to accomplish projects successfully, clear leadership is required involving all project team members. At this point, software and Internet-based leadership systems are a great support.

It´s no secret to project managers, portfolio managers and people in charge of planning: According to new statistics, about 60 per cent of all projects are not successfully completed. „Not successfully“ in this context does not imply that the project failed altogether. The point is that the project management did not succeed in achieving the goals related to time, cost and quality. What are the reasons? Or to put it the other way round: Which are the factors leading to a successfully completed implementation of a planned project?

Managing a project means leading a project
The factors enabling successful implementation of a planned project are manifold and largely depend on the particular project. But there is one aspect which is crucial to success or failure of ALL projects: targeted and efficient leadership. This being accepted, is makes sense to give some thought to what leadership should be like, and how it should be implemented. Who has which competencies? Which methods are used for leadership? At which intervals do the responsible people meet? How does the management of pending items look like? Or is there maybe an explicit leadership methodology to be followed?

In order to support those in charge of planning, project managers as well as business managers in their daily work, so-called leadership systems are starting to get more commonly used. These systems systematically map leadership and leadership tasks related to a particular project. And, more importantly all leadership information is stored in a Leadership System, contextually interlinked and prepared to support the needs of particular target group.

The leadership system maps the leadership process
Usually, a person responsible for project planning works with a number of supporting software programs such as ERP systems, office applications, collaborative environment and project management solutions. As a result, the leadership information is often widely scattered in different systems making efficient and targeted tracking of data very difficult, for example when it comes to reproducing the reasons for a certain decision or a time delay.

How then can the process of leading, the action of leadership, be mapped and sustainably documented? In contrast to the different programs from which the leader gathers data and facts needed for decisions, the leadership system systematically maps the process of leading the project planning and answers, among others, the following questions: At which point of the project are we? How can we quantify progress and recognize, define and estimate possible risks and bottlenecks? How do we – in accordance with our particular Leadership Methods – usefully and permanently map changes, requests, decisions, events, risks or measures, all in the same place? As it is the leadership meetings that best reflect how leadership is implemented, leadership systems usually offer a variety of automated functions related to the planning, calling, conducting and documentation of meetings.

In the follow-up article Efficient and Targeted Project Execution (Part 2) I will focus on leadership meetings, proactive risk management and the question if there is a way of quantifying leadership.

About the author:
Robert Sutz is CEO of TimeWinner AG , Wallisellen, Switzerland. TimeWinner AG develops and markets the Internet-based Leadership $ystem TimeWinner.

October 6, 2008
The Culture Imperative of Leadership

We rely in the majority of decisions and actions on the cultural patterns of organizations, in which we live. Most of these patterns and values with which we steer ourselves are unconscious. Only rarely we object to them. Some individual patterns are actively learned by training or by serious “injuries”. Think about how you drive a car: You coordinate hand, foot and eye, adhere to the rules and respect the rights of other road users. Brain researchers describe this with the training of our synapses. “What has proved working and repeatedly gone through or what is equipped with high energy, engraves our actions and behavior.”

You have a wealth of experience that these organizational and individual process of coining patterns does not always run smoothly, specifically in companies and organizations. Not only that nowadays some patterns became dysfunctional, which most probably in the past were perfectly appropriate. Some organizational patterns, in particular how we act in power struggles or protect us from these like “devalue”, “dominate”, “intrigue”, “to put on ice,” “denounce”, “refuse to support”, “subject”, “threaten,” “spread rumours” are quite indecent, even if they are individually applied not fully aware nor intended. To use words of Hannah Arendt, they are part of the “banality of evil”, as you find it even today in times of democracy and market economy (occasionally).

You rightly take this for a “moral argument”. Even if there is nobody personally to blame for: “Do not judge!” – If leadership by example and effects of actions in organizations supplies and shapes the cultural patterns, an imperative can be formulated: “In everything you do or initiate as a manager, think about which cultural patterns you want to shape or make available for your organization through it.” This usually also pays off economically, as long as we depend in our value creation on cooperation, responsibility and creativity. And even if not …

About the author:
Dr. Michael Loebbert is Coach and Management Consultant and author of the monthly publication “Change Management Short Cut“.

October 2, 2008
Integrating HP PPM with HP Quality Center – As Simple as It Looks?

Very often, the processes of change & transport and quality management in the IT organzation are technically not very tightly integrated. Although organizationally, they are well coordinated, with both processes being clearly defined, digitized, automated and constantly improved, I doubt if their integration is tight enough.

HP Software, a significant vendor not only of the process engine for change and transport management HP PPM, but also of HP Quality Center as the leading test management solution, provides a basis for an integrated solution. I was asked to carry this over into practice – an exciting as well as seemingly simple task.

The first step was to technically join both environments together and logically merge them into one platform.

The Search

Well, searching for information in the Internet was not very fruitful or, to be exact: there is none. So I was forced to utilize my good connections to HP to get holf of the documents I needed. Thanks to the competent people I addressed, it was a success.

Compatibility with versions

An overview of the compatibility of versions was particularly important and helpful. Our PPM versions required that we used the PPM extension Application Change Lifecycle (ACL 2.0) for the intergration with QC. The newer tool Managing Application Change Tool (MAC) does not yet work with our customer´s version.

Integration guide

The procedure of integrating PPM and QC is documented in the Integration Guide of HP and described step by step. So it was my job to work out the 200 pages of this guide one page after another.

Mappings

Applying the technical procedure to our actual environment and system landscape was a challenge, particularly with regard to the mappings. The intergrated standard workflows and interface definitions may be a good basis for implementation. But to meet all requirements, the mappings of data, stati, and processes must be elaborated. Careful attention must be paid to the change of stati in the workflow in order to avoid uncontrolled process steps.

What next?

So far, I have made a huge step towards the integration aimed for. But I am sure there will be more problems to be sorted out. In due time, I will report on my experience with the ongoing implementation. Comments and further hints from fellow sufferers or sympathizers are welcome.

September 30, 2008
A Question of Culture
Perhaps you know the history of the PT Cruiser. Sure, you have seen this car on the street, the look is retro, fuel consumption is too high, technology and security are average. When Daimler joined in the responsibility for Daimler Chrysler, the PT Cruiser was just launched and taken for a flop. The production was driven down and banned into a small factory in Mexico. But it came different. The demand could no longer be served and customers were dissatisfied. – Today the PT Cruiser is a sales success.

A cultural fault! In the cultural patterns for car in the U.S. are freedom feeling and originality in the first place. The PT Cruiser meets these to a great extent. German and europeen values as technology and security are the subordinate.

Success of failure within enterprises are often depending on culture:
- Marketing. A product does not fit into a given market. – In Germany, the PT Cruiser was obviously never a winner .- Or the other way around: With new products presented cultural values no longer fit for the culture of the company. In the wake sales are stagnating.
- Strategic Alignment. Cultural values in a company as “security” and “stability” do not fit to the new strategy, which “entrepreneurship” and “risk”.
- Corporate culture. From above announced corporate values such as “appreciation” and “enthusiasm” are not lived. – In the past things ran very well with a certain “arrogance” and “skeptical”. – Cultural patterns cannot develop their potential, if stubborn management decisions take a different direction.
- Change Management. Change and development of the company fails to the tenacity of the existing cultural patterns.
Questions of culture are (1) cultural fit and (2) cultural change: How much fit is needed and how much change is possible? And if change cultural patterns is needed, how can this best succeed? How can the cultural potential of the company to be used?

About the author:
Dr. Michael Loebbert is Coach and Management Consultant and author of the montly publication “Change Management Short Cut“.
September 22, 2008
Fresh from SAP TechEd Las Vegas: Panaya 3.2

At SAP’s TechEd conference, the new releases of Panaya Support Automation 3.2 and Panaya Upgrade Automation 3.2 have been announced.

Panaya 3.2 Overview

Upgrade Automation is the fast and accurate way to control the impact of SAP projects and SAP changes in general. It automatically analyzes SAP systems and changes and provides online services to answer key questions such as:

•    What errors will occur without intervention?
•    How can they be prevented?
•    What exactly needs be tested?
•    What are the most important risks?

Support Automation analyzes functional changes to SAP system before they are released. Using analysis technology based on a unique algoritm, Panaya evaluates changes in the context of the complex interdependencies of SAP systems. For every change, it automatically creates test plans, classifies changes based on risk, and alerts managers and other stakeholders and informs about risks.

Upgraded and new Functions in Release 3.2

Root Cause Analysis (New Feature for Support Automation)
If all of a sudden something is not working well in your production system, your team could spend hours finding the culprit. Or, you could simply launch Panaya’s new Root Cause Analysis for SAP, enter the transaction that is misbehaving, and you’ll immediately see the primary suspects: all the recent changes that have actually impacted this transaction.

Real time impact analysis of code changes (New Feature for Support Automation)
Change any ABAP program, during an upgrade project or during maintenance, and Panaya immediately tells you what is the impact and what must be tested.

Comprehensive Project Plan for SAP Upgrades (New Feature for Upgrade Automation)
This is one of the most powerful features: Now Panaya generates a comprehensive project plan for your upgrade, including sensible defaults for effort and people allocation to tasks. The plan can be exported into Microsoft Project

Completely Redesigned User Interface (Enhanced Feature for Both Products)
Since we added so many new features, they needed a new home.
The application is now logically divided into SAP Upgrade, Impact Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, and Transport History

Code Highlighting (New Feature for Upgrade Automation)
When opening a program source from reports, Panaya will automatically highlight the upgrade problems in your code. For example: In the “Obsolete Functions” report – Click a program name to view its code and Panaya will highlight all the places in the code that use this function.

Transport History (New Feature for Support Automation)
If you need to track changes to your SAP system for compliance, analysis, or other reasons, Panaya keeps the complete transport information.

Usage of User Exits (New Feature for Both Products)
Now it is easy to see all the transactions that are using a user exit using a new “Drill Down” report

Impact Overview Page (Enhanced Feature for Support Automation)
Now the impact overview page displays the custom transactions and all the Batch or Interface transactions. This replaces the previous functionality

Cloned Program Analysis (Enhanced Feature for Upgrade Automation)
An improved algorithm now finds even more cloned programs that were especially difficult to track.

Availability (Both Products)
Since Panaya is software as a service, there’s no need to upgrade any software. The capabilities are available immediately to all customers.

Conclusion

Changes to SAP systems often entail substantial additional expense and undesirable effects for SAP organizations. Reference upgrade projects show that consistent, pragmatic impact analysis in a SAP Change and Transport Management process can reduce efforts by more than 30%. Risk gets massively reduced and surprises after change implementation eliminated. And beteo partner Panaya’s SaaS solutions can be implemented with little effort and with no or limited adjustments to the system.

September 19, 2008
Test Management – Much Quality for Little Money
From my point of view, there are three key components for reaching the goal „high quality at low costs“ in test management: adequate methods, adequate staffing, and adequate tools – each at the right time. If one of these factors are neglected, the project threatens to fail.

Luckily, the tool comes with the adequate method, without nailing you down too much, enabling the planning of resources and test phases. I have had some experience with projects where all team members started off highly motivated, applying well thought-out methods, but soon failed to come to grips with the tools – the worst-case in general being a spread-sheet driven project, in which things like: „Haven´t you run a test? I made an entry in the Excel sheet that you should …. oh, sorry, it is still on my computer, forgot to upload it. …” typically happen.

Another frequent scenario: the best of all tools has been installed, but nobody ever told the people to make use of it.

So what should a tool be able to perform that is expected to map a consistent quality management process and make it transparent to all people involved? From my point of view, this tool should
- provide a simple and intuitive interface,
- enable global using, i.e. be web-based, without requiring much installation effort,
- allow requirements to be recorded, categorized, and evaluated,
- enable risk estimation,
- allow rights and roles to be managed,
- allow tasks to be assigned,
- be able to have test cases recorded, managed, and executed,
- enable simple release management,
- allow errors to be recorded and traced in a workflow,
- facilitate evaluation of the different phases as well as the total project,
- be able to link all entities and allow detected errors to be assigned to a test case or a requirement,
- enable test automation – by service tests in an early phase, later also by GUI automation,
- have open interfaces to other tools.
A high degree of acceptance by all persons involved should be achieved and the users should be able to apply the solution without too much training.

Having read my article up to this point, you might think: Okay, I realize that Excel can´t do all this. But I wonder if any other tool can? In my opinion, there is one tool that meets these requirements, Quality Center by HP, originally launched by Mercury Interactive.

And the best of all: Not only can I observe that it makes my quality and test management projects a success, I also take great pleasure in working with it.

About the author:
Gerd Fladrich ist test management expert at Fladrich Consulting, Pliening near München, a beteo partner in the section of quality management and testing.
September 3, 2008