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CI-620 System Analysis and Design
Topics 3/19/98
Management
Schools of Management
- Classical/Traditional Management Perspective (F.Taylor)
Command-Control-Communication
Management Thinks, Employees Work
- Empirical School: studies management in other situations, not always similar.
- Behavioral School: Management must consider needs of individuals, reward systems,
and the social context.
- Decision Theory School: Mgmt is a rational approach to decision making using models and operations research
- Management Systems School: Mgmt is the development of a business systems model. Business is a system of inputs and outputs intended to min/max some objective.
Contains contingency theory.
Industrial-Military View of Mgmt: C-cubed
- Command: deciding what the mission is
- Control: assigning work and ensuring it gets done
- Communication: moving information
Modern view of Mgmt functions:
- planning
- organizing
- staffing
- controlling (measuring, evaluating, correcting)
- directing (staffing, training, supervising, delgating, motivating, counseling, coordinating)
(Please note that the instructor thinks this is elitist but prevalent)
| The Primary Management Pitfall: Knowing Thyself |
Who is Me?
The me I think I am
The me I wish I were
The me I really am
The me I try to project
The me others perceive
The me I used to be
The me others try to make me
Author Unknown |
Four Men
It chanced upon a winter's night
Safe sheltered from the weather.
The board was spread for only one,
Yet four men dined together.
There sat the man I meant to be
In glory, spurred and booted.
And close beside him, to the right
The man I am reputed.
The man I think myself to be
His seat was occupying,
Hard by the man I really am
To hold his own was trying.
And all beneath one roof we met
Yet none called his fellow brother;
No sign of recognition passed,
They knew not one another.
author unknown |
Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Y:
- Theory X: workers are lazy, indolent, and require supervision.
- workers dislike and avoid work
- supervisors must threaten punishment and supervise closely
- average worker avoids responsibility and seeks direction
- Theory Y: employees are willing to work without close supervision
- average worker wants to be active and finds work satisfying
- greatest results come from willing participation and self-direction
- average worker seeks involvement and self-respect
- This is a spectrum.
- PM's may have to treat Th.Y (artistic) engineers/programmers as Th.X to stay on schedule
- Organizations, Managers, and Employees can be categorized as X-Y.
- Management/Org restructuring is often a compromise between X and Y; is the org
structured to manage people or to manage work?
Herzberg's 1955 The Motivation to Work
A 2-factor theory of work motivation |
Satisfiers / Motivators
Challenge
Responsibility
Achievement
Recognition
Advancement |
Dis-Satisfiers / Hygeine Factors
Physical Work Environment
Context of work (salary, supervision)
No wins, Just Losses |
Change Management
- all mangement tasks are Change
- Communication
- Trust
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Project Management
What is a project?
- unique, one-time
- constraints from within
- requirements from without
- multi-disciplinary
- complex
- change
Project Manager's Tasks
- Scope / what
- quality / how
- schedule / when
- cost
- Risk / uncertainty (profit pivot)
- HR / staffing
- Contracts / resources
- communications
Projects should be planned from the top-down.
Projects should be controlled by the bottom-up
"Good Enough/ Fixible" Paradigm
Projects have a Project Champion and a Project Manager
Projects should be approved by the chain of command, not managed by the C-of-C.
Authority is the key to the project management process.
Critical relationship: relationship between Project Mgr and Functional Manager.
The resources should be allocated to the project schedule, not vice versa.
A Systems View of PM
Project Management
- PM's are the interface between Client and Org.
- PM's are the purveyors of quality
- Quality, Schedule, Cost, Scope
When you must, sacrifice:
- cost
- schedule
- scope if you're lucky
- never sacrifice quality
- Critical Path Method Scheduling
- Balancing Resources using CPM
- #1 variable in project success is a SMART project objective statement
- Specific
- Measurable
- Agreement
- Realistic
- Time/Cost framed.
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Authority is the biggest issue in Project Management
- Authority is the ability to decide and direct
- Responsibiity is the assignment for a specific event or activity
- Accountability is the ownership of success of failure. (Acc=Au*Re)
Types of authority and power:
- Formal authority
- reward power
- penalty power
- expert power
- referent power
The ultimate factor in the PM's ability to get the job done is usually her leadership style.
Project Managers have limited motivational tools available.
Guidelines for proper motivation include:
- adopt a positive attitude
- do not criticize management
- do not make promises that cannot be kept
- circulate customer reports to wave the flag
- give each person the attention they require
Project Life Cycle Cost Issues
Effort Expended over PM life cycle
Quality of Information over PM life cycle
Cost and Opporunity over PM life cycle
Conflict Management. The PM is the locus of conflict resolution.
- Know the high-conflict points:
- Conflict over project priorities
- conflict over admin procedures
- conflict over technical opinions and performance trade-offs
- conflict over manpower resources
- conflict over cost
- conflict over schedules
- personality conflict
- Recognize the conflict-handling strategies:
- withdrawal (abandoning the issue)
- smoothing (de-emphasize conflict, emphasize common ground)
- compromising (give-and-take)
- forcing (win/lose)
- confrontation (facing conflict directly)
- Negotiations should take place at the earliest/lowest level
- Definition of the problem must take first priority (issue, impact, alternatives, recommendations)
- Temporary management situations produce conflicts.
- Conflicts are increased in an atmosphere of constant and rapid change.
- Conflicts can be beneficial if they produce new information or enhance project success.
- Conflicts can be disfunctional if they result in poor decision making.
PERT charts
Programmed Evaluation Review Technique
Used to estimate time and develop schedules
Expected Time = ( t:opt +4x t:nor + t:pess) /6
where t:opt= time/optomistic, t:nor = time/normal, t:pess = time/pessimistic
Most of the rest of PERT has been moved into CPM
Critical Path Method
- Starting at the origin, count time moving along each path.
- Calculate ES (early start) times for each point (considering prerequisite tasks)
- Terminator points have no further progression.
- When you reach the final terminator, identify the time of completion.
- Working backward from completion, determine the LS (latest start) times for each task.
- The critical path consists of the path where the ES=LS.
- When ES.lt.LS, there is slack time in the amount of LS-ES.
Assignment:
1 of 2.Draw a chart representing this PERT work-flow:
- A and D start at the origin.
- J follows F but precedes K.
- C follows A but precedes G.
- H follows D but precedes L.
- B follows A but precedes F.
- K,L, and E are terminal activities
- K follows G and H.
- E follows B and C.
- F is independant of C.
- L is independant of J.
2 of 2.Answer these questions regarding the CPM chart below:
- What is the length (in weeks) of the critical path?
- What is the largest slack time available for any activity?
- Every activity takes two people for the length of time indicated.
Build a schedule minimizing staffing but do not delay the project.
Project Management ensures performance by:
- planning the work
- measuring performance on 3 axes against the plan
- identifying variance / slips
- fixing slips
- two resources: contingency and performance/productivity
Twenty Project Management Proverbs
from Project Management, Harold Kerzner
- You cannot produce a baby in one month by impregnating nine women.
- The same work under the same conditions will be estimated differently by ten different estimators or by one estimator at ten different times.
- The most valuable and least used word in the project manager's vocabulary is NO.
- You can con a sucker into committing to an unreasonable deadline, but you can't bully him into meeting it.
- The more ridiculous the deadline, the more it costs to try to meet it.
- The more desperate the situation, the more optomistic the situatee.
- Too few people on a project can't solve the problems-- too many create more problems than they solve.
- You can freeze the user's specs but he won't stop expecting.
- Frozen specs and the abominable snowman are alike: they are both myths, and they both melt when sufficient heat is applied.
- The conditions attached to a promise are forgotten, and the promise is remembered.
- What you don't know hurts you.
- A user will tell you anything you ask about -- nothing more.
- Of several possible interpretations of a communication, the lease convenient one is the only correct one.
- What is not on paper has never been said.
- No major project is ever installed on time, within budget, with the same staff that started it.
- Projects progress quickley until they become 90 percent complete; then they remain at 90 percent complete forever.
- If project content is allowed to change freely, the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.
- No major system is ever completely debugged; attempts to debug a system inevitably introduce new bugs that are even harder to find.
- Project teams detest progress reporting because it vividly demonstrates their lack of progress.
- Parkinson and Murphy are alive and well -- in your project.
Communications
Projects are run by communications.
Communications is the process by which information is exchanged.
- Written Formal
- Written informal
- Oral Formal
- Oral Informal
Another view of Shannon and Weaver's communications model
Methods of Communicating vs Number of Tools
- F2F: face to face 3 tools
- Phone 2 tools
- Written 1 tool
Directives should be written with one simple, clear objective so that subordinates can work effectively and get it right the first time.
Orders should be written in a manner expecting immediate compliance.
Never issue an order you cannot enforce.
Oral instructions should be phrased as requests, and the requestor should ask the receiver to repeat the order to confirm understanding.
Handouts Distributed
- Corporate Jungle Spawns a New Species: The Project Manager
- Statistical Concepts and Quality Tools
- Pictures Please: Presenting Information Visually, Wm. Horton.
- The Human Side of Management, Thomas Teal, Harvard Business Review
- Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy, Kim and Mauborgne, Harvard Business Review
