Productivity improvement through right governance

Productivity Improvement through Right
Governance
Chandan Lal Patary
PMP
Development Manager
ABB

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Productivity Improvement through Right Governance
Contents
Abstract...................................................................................................................... 3
1.0 Introduction:...................................................................................................... 4
2.0 Governance and productivity:........................................................................... 7
2.1 Productivity improvement steps: ................................................................. 11
2.2 Project Classification................................................................................... 12
2.3 KAIZEN for effective Governance: .............................................................. 12
2.4 Data manipulation and Data authentication: ............................................... 13
2.5 Change Management.................................................................................. 18
2.6 Requirement Management:......................................................................... 19
2.7 Benefit Realization: ..................................................................................... 21
3.0 Conclusion...................................................................................................... 22
About the author....................................................................................................... 24

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Abstract
This paper describe about the productivity improvement through Metrics driven
approach and by effective project governance. Every organization is looking for
maximizing the productivity year on year through various mechanisms. In Project
governance we ensure the program or project benefit and build the knowledge
assets for better productivity. Metrics based Governance activity if driven efficiently
will satisfy stakeholders as information will be transparent about the business
progress, which will minimize the failure risks with efficient decision making process.
Metrics collection, Analysis, taking action and put it into continuous practice will
improve productivity significantly.
This paper will explain below
a) What are the parameters relevant to productivity that need to be tracked for
effective Governance
b) How can an organization demonstrate customer satisfaction and effective value
for money with metrics driven approach
c) Effective change management and risk management to minimize down time and
increase productivity.
d) How effective requirement management, capturing effective requirements,
tracking requirements till completion, asking effective questions to create better
requirement is the way to maximize the productivity at the later period of time in
execution cycle.
e) How can we do the benefit realization and achieving results and link the same for
knowledge building and productivity.

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1.0 Introduction:
Organizations are becoming more and more competitive to survive in the market.
Investors are becoming more and more cautious about the investment. Stakeholders
expect to realize the value for their investments as early as possible. What
organization can do in this situation? Execution speed might be the correct answer.
All investors expect innovative solution with minimal time frame. The moment
organization increases the speed, the chances for failure also increase if there is an
absence of data driven decision making. To maximize the customer satisfaction
organization needs to share the project or product or business data which satisfies
the customer’s curiosity about the project progress and output vs money invested.
The data should talk timeline, quality and how the budget has been utilized and other
vital parameters of the projects and its progress .Project governance will provide a
guideline considering all the factors which will drive the customer
satisfaction.Governanance data will change based on the product, domain, and
business which organizations are dealing with. Stakeholder needs to provide
feedback wherever correction required based on the data received. All
communication with stakeholders should base on quantifiable data as subjective
discussion creates confusion.
Figure 1: Cockpit Dashboard 1
The Figure 1: shows the cockpit dashboard for an aircraft. This picture
demonstrates the importance of the data for decision making. The display is

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continuously sensing and feeding the guiding information to the pilot to take
corrective steps with speed and accuracy. In critical system decision making has to
be very fast based on the dashboard display information. Pilot has complete
information about each and every part of the aircraft from this cockpit display. How
can organization apply the same concept for each and every area inside the
organization?
Same applies to the hospital when patient is in ICU(Intensive Care Unit) ,doctor uses
PMS(patient Monitoring System) which is an embedded device and the device
continuously display the vital parameters of a patient to the doctors so that they can
take effective decision at the right time to save the patient’s life.
Figure 2: Display of the Patient Monitoring System used in ICU, demonstrating the
data driven decision making. This system extracts all the vital parameters from a
patient and displays the same to the doctor.
Figure 2: ICU Dashboard 1
Governance will produce dashboard data which can be a guiding force for the
decision making process. Organization should have the ability to take decision based
on the dashboard data show at the right time so that damage can be minimized.
Metrics based measurement and productivity has a tight link.

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According to the definition of Productivity = Output/Input.
Productivity definition is very simple. Inputs are the resources to generate the
expected ouput. Resources are not abundant so everyone needs to be careful to
utilize the resources and maximize the output.
Though the definition is very simple but the real productivity has little to do with how
hard the staff works, how many hours they put in, or even how much output they
produce. Real productivity is measured by the business value that their work
generates for the organization.
Various questions appear when we look into the resource usages.
a) How can stakeholders know how efficiently resource utilization is happening?
b) How can stakeholders ensure optimum usage of the resources so that
productivity goes up?
c) How can stakeholders take decision to control the ambient factors which
influence the output?
Centralize Dashboard with critical data, accessible by all at any time, plays a
significant role for decision making.

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2.0 Governance and productivity:
What does "Governance" mean: the process of decision-making and the process
by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)?
Governance is a framework which enables management teams to make better
decisions about securing their critical information and Information Technology
infrastructure and protecting their intellectual capital.
Governance helps organizations to define who is responsible for what and how
Information Technology decisions are made. It enables Information Technology to
adhere to business objectives and maximize value from the investments. It can
protect against failures that result from the misalignment of Information Technology
and business strategies.
Project governance ensures that complex Information Technology projects deliver
the value expected of them, rather than an expensive and embarrassing failure. An
appropriate governance framework helps save money by ensuring that all
expenditure is appropriate for the risks being tackled. It also enables business
analysts to better understand and compare the way in which public companies
manage their technology investments.
Good governance is about both achieving desired results and achieving them in the
right way. Since the "right way" is largely shaped by the cultural norms and values of
the organization, there can be no universal template for good governance. Each
organization must tailor its own definition of good governance to suit its needs and
values
Effective Governance starts with a standard way to define the process. Every
business is unique, customer expectations are different. To start the right
governance team members need to discuss, communicate and list down the
expected flow to the governance.
Projects need to identify what should be the measurements parameters?
What are the goals and objectives?

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What frequency all the artifacts data has to be collected?
Who will be the responsible team members to collect the data and who will be for
analyzing the data?
Who are the stakeholders and what level of information they should get and what
timeline?
Project team will get better results when project metrics are in balance.
For example, having only a metrics for speed or only a metric for accuracy would not
help the project very much. If measure only speed, project deliverable might work
poorly.
If projects measure only accuracy, projects may never finish. Metrics for both used
together, though, may create tension, provide the balance for the project needs to
deal with trade-offs and best achieve for project goals.
Measurement drives behavior, so organization can use positive data to recognize
and reward accomplishments. Negative information that project report (or threaten to
report) can be a powerful aid in helping to control the project.
Through data driven approach we can analyze the issue to achieve excellent
productivity.
Few questions appear when we talk about productivity
a) How can we ensure that what we produce is the right output at first time?
b) Can we do the frequent review with the stakeholders, change frequently based
on the input and quickly adapt with the new model?
c) Stabilizing the input, process and output criteria based on the discussion?
Everything is possible when we have right data to analyze. Diagnostic data in
dashboard should continuously display the current status and through that input
stakeholder should understand the health and can able to predict the future.

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Every department in an organization should have dashboard to
Assurance, Development team, Architect team, testing team, supports team,
procurement team etc. so that organization can fine tune whenever and wherever
require.
Governance should align with the strategic plan of the organization. The gro
organization is expecting will fulfill when process output is same as expected
strategic output of the organization.
Figure 3: Data flow Diagram 1
Figure 3: Demonstrates the cycle of data flow which
effective decision making.
Looking again into the productivity dimension
Productivity is a derived metric:
Input is easy to measure (e.g., activity
Output and environm
Every department in an organization should have dashboard to
Governance should align with the strategic plan of the organization. The gro
strategic output of the organization.
: Demonstrates the cycle of data flow which organization can execute for
Looking again into the productivity dimension,
Productivity is a derived metric: function (output, input, environment)
is easy to measure (e.g., activity-based controlling)
environment are difficult to describe and measure.
Every department in an organization should have dashboard to display. Quality
Governance should align with the strategic plan of the organization. The growth what
organization can execute for
function (output, input, environment)
are difficult to describe and measure.

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Requirement management is one more area for the productivity improvement. As
requirements directly improve output, organizations need to look into the quantifiable
measurement of the output like product demo, code shipping rate, rate of bugs
closed in a cycle etc.
Benefit realization is the key to the productivity improvement. Every organization by
executing project acquires knowledge, produce reusable components which can be
reuse directly and save effort which will directly contribute into the productivity
improvement.

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2.1 Productivity improvement steps:
Figure 4: Productivity improvement points
Understanding software productivity for a large system development requires
complex set of qualitative and quantitative data from multiple sources for analysis.
Effective Governance process starts with a vision. Organizations take actions to
effectively utilize the Governance framework and produce value through that.
Work culture,
people, ambient
Automate wherever
possible
Rapid Prototype, Demo,
Update
Waste reduction
Knowledge
Management
Drive for rework
reduction
Reduce over
production, over wait,
over preparation
Deploy Process
and continuous
mature the process
Generate more
reuse components
Improve
Productivity

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Figure 4: Demonstrates the various factors which influence the productivity
improvement. Organization need to put special focus on all these aspects to
effectively collect the data on all those area and regularly monitoring for all the
collected data. Does it guarantee the improvement? Not really but it should be the
starting point for the improvement journey.
2.2 Project Classification
To start with effective Governance team needs to start with project classification.
In Information Technology projects, there are several types of tasks an organization
executes, Fresh Development projects, Minor enhancement, Maintenance project,
Support projects, Hardware and software involvement and many other categories.
Budget, number of resources play significant role in project classification.
Projects are locally or globally distributed?
Timeline of the project? One year/two year or multiyear project?
Which Technology the project is going to use? Open source? Propriety technology
Architectural maturity for the product?
Team Process maturity?
Several other factors need to consider for classification of the project.
All the above factors provide inputs for the categorization of a project.
Based on the project categories, measurement criteria changes and effective
monitoring and control mechanism differ. Organization needs to look into the
category of the project to identify right measurement parameters. Montior those
parameters for demonstrating quality output and continuous improvement.
2.3 KAIZEN for effective Governance:
Once governance process steps are identified, team need to demonstrate the
improvement with the defined process. Stable process provides good productivity.
Regular brainstorming with the team members and upper management involvement
to come up with different idea is essential. Team needs to identify which areas are
working well and where team needs changes to see what can be improved.

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Dashboard has to be displayed in centralized area for every individual to see how
effectively each team is performing. Upper management should visit team members
to encourage and discuss as a surprise visit.
2.4 Data manipulation and Data authentication:
In metrics and measurement data is the key for effective decision making. If team is
working on manipulated data or not with the actual data consequence will be high
which will resultant into loss in business in multiple areas. Rework is the major loss
for the organization. When metrics are used to find fault and punish, people provide
them only grudgingly, and do whatever they can to provide results that demonstrate
no problems—whether that’s true or not. Gathering valid, useful information starts
with a meaningful commitment on your part to use the measures for process
improvement, good decision making, and project problem solving. If there is even a
suspicion that data gathered will be used to criticize, punish, or even embarrass
people, those responsible for reporting them will find a way to game the measures
and disguise what is going on.
Below figures explain different dimensions of the projects status through dashboard
irrespective of the project size. Any project has to break to manage efficiently,
manage through quantifiable measurement and metrics based management
philosophy. All these sample data may change based on the project, product,
domain or business. These sample dashboard data extracted from a software
project.
Figure 5: is a dashboard data which is located in centralized location for global team
to view. It demonstrates the health of the each scrum project and how they should
take corrective actions if required. The dashboard data is showing different
dimensions of the scrum projects and how each area is performing. There are more
to measure but team has chosen these are the basic parameters which ensure
project progress and guide them whenever there is any fault.

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Figure 5: SCRUM project Dashboard
Figure 6: this picture demonstrates about the areas where team can focus to
improve the productivity. All these areas if not taken care properly can lead into
execution efficiency bottleneck. It will increase the waste or rework. All these areas
are the checkpoint for the productivity improvement journey.
Figure 5: SCRUM project Dashboard
icture demonstrates about the areas where team can focus to
productivity improvement journey.
icture demonstrates about the areas where team can focus to

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Figure 6: Dashboard contents
Figure 7: and Figure 8: is a typical dashboard for Quality Assurance team where
every granular information has been displayed to take corrective steps wherever
required. The pictures are sh
are the bottlenecks.
: is a typical dashboard for Quality Assurance team where
required. The pictures are showing how testing activities are performing and where
: is a typical dashboard for Quality Assurance team where
owing how testing activities are performing and where

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Figure 7: Dashboard for Quality Assurance
Figure 7: Dashboard for Quality Assurance

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Figure 8: Dashboard for Quality Assurance 2
Figure 9: Questionnaire can be used for Dashboard preparation. Effective and
efficient questions based on the product, domain, business, organizational vision will
help to prepare correct dashboard data. Every team should have data to assess
themselves every decided frequency level
Figure 8: Dashboard for Quality Assurance 2
: Questionnaire can be used for Dashboard preparation. Effective and
uestions based on the product, domain, business, organizational vision will
themselves every decided frequency level
: Questionnaire can be used for Dashboard preparation. Effective and
uestions based on the product, domain, business, organizational vision will

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Figure 9: Checklist for Dashboard
2.5 Change Management
Productivity is severely affected when there are many frequent change requests
coming at the middle of the project execution cycle. Based on the priority team need
to take up the change request and do the impact analysis. Teams need to measure
the change trend and on increasing of the trend proper investigation and corrective
steps are required.
Figure 9: Checklist for Dashboard
Change Management
rend and on increasing of the trend proper investigation and corrective
rend and on increasing of the trend proper investigation and corrective

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Figure 10: Change management Dashboard
Figure 10: is the change management tracking dashboard. It will provide information
to all the stakeholders how many times
should be done and scope change need to take care so that it does not affect
productivity. Change is an essential part efficient project execution but same has to
handle efficiently. Change process should be well
tool. Changes improve the product but decrease motivation level in team. Frequent
changes increase reworks and increase wastages if not manage with well thoughts
and good process.
2.6 Requirement Management:
The major consequence of requirement related problems are rework
something again that team thought was already done. Rework can consume 30 to 50
percent of team’s total development cost (Boehm and Papaccio 1988) and
requirements errors account for 70 to 85 percent of
1997).
Track requirements status, stakeholders need to know the requirement status to
predict the project progress. Review comments, review process, capturing the
comments have to be through tool and process so that effort mi
organizations are not losing any data in process. Version history has to track so that
any given time any version of the document can be reproduce. The following quote
from Fredrick Brooks illustrates why requirements are so important:
Figure 10: Change management Dashboard
: is the change management tracking dashboard. It will provide information
to all the stakeholders how many times change has been requested. Impact analysis
handle efficiently. Change process should be well documented and tracked through
Requirement Management:
ence of requirement related problems are rework
requirements errors account for 70 to 85 percent of the rework cost (Leffingwell
comments have to be through tool and process so that effort mi
from Fredrick Brooks illustrates why requirements are so important:
: is the change management tracking dashboard. It will provide information
change has been requested. Impact analysis
documented and tracked through
ence of requirement related problems are rework—doing
the rework cost (Leffingwell
comments have to be through tool and process so that effort minimizes and

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“The hardest part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.
No other part of the conceptual work is as difficult as establishing the detailed
technical requirements, including all of the interfaces to people, to machines, and to
other software systems. No other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if
done wrong. No other part is more difficult to rectify later” (Brooks 1995). To quote
Karl Wiegers (2004), “If you don’t get the requirements right, it doesn’t matter how
well you do anything else.”
Figure 11: Requirement Management Dashboard
Figure 11: Dashboard provides information to all the employees about the quality of
the requirements and raise alarms if any change require for a requirement.
rdest part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.
tware systems. No other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if
Figure 11: Requirement Management Dashboard
: Dashboard provides information to all the employees about the quality of
rdest part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.
tware systems. No other part of the work so cripples the resulting system if
: Dashboard provides information to all the employees about the quality of

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2.7 Benefit Realization:
Figure 12: Benefit Measurement Mind map
Any project execution should have Benefit Management and Measurement process
against Benefits. Organization need to measure the learning’s which should be
reused in next similar or related projects, as knowledge brin
improvement and execution speed. Upper management support requires realizing
the benefit effectively and capturing information for future. Resource availability and
dependent project realization has to handle efficiently. Knowledge manageme
should connect with benefit realization data. Leaders need to encourage team
members for contributing and achieve the knowledge management related
organizational goal.
Figure 12: is the sample flow for Benefit measurement. Individual Program can
come up with their own process flow for collecting the Benefit Management data and
share with other team.
Benefit Realization:
Figure 12: Benefit Measurement Mind map
reused in next similar or related projects, as knowledge brings productivity
dependent project realization has to handle efficiently. Knowledge manageme
: is the sample flow for Benefit measurement. Individual Program can
me up with their own process flow for collecting the Benefit Management data and
gs productivity
dependent project realization has to handle efficiently. Knowledge management data
: is the sample flow for Benefit measurement. Individual Program can
me up with their own process flow for collecting the Benefit Management data and

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3.0 Conclusion
Organizations need to create a culture where all team members would be eager to
contribute for the organizational growth. Leaders have to communicate the
organizational vision to all team members and build healthy, productive teams and
the same team members will contribute for excellent stakeholder value generation.
Leaders have to mentor, coach, communicate and build that culture into the blood of
the system.
At any given point of time any stakeholders wherever they involve should be able to
know through metrics what is going on? How it is going on? Why it is like that? What
steps are currently taken by whom? Expectation is: Total transparent system.
Organization need time to reach that stage but continuous drive has to exist from all
level and from all members.
Every team members have to own the organizational vision, mission and culture and
work for maximizing the productivity through innovation and maintain the speed of
execution excellence.
PMI has provided many guidelines for better project Governance. Effective
governance plan and execution of the same for achieving the excellent result with
continuous process improvement should be a part of organizational culture and
same resultant into a great productivity improvement. Data driven decision making
culture will help to minimize the waste reduction and improve productivity. Through
systematic knowledge management organization can maximize productivity and
measure improvement and demonstrate the same to stakeholders for excellent
customer satisfaction. When each and every team member makes these practices as
a habit and data driven decision making, data driven demonstration will be a part of
communication agenda than only organization will demonstrate value to
stakeholders. Organization can minimize several overheads and maximize the cost
benefit if organization has dashboard with data for different dimensions for all the
projects, products, units, divisions wherever applicable. Customer satisfaction will
increase when we identify, collect, share the data on continuous basis and improve

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the process and output by collecting feedback from various stakeholders.
Organization has to look for data through governance framework for overproduction,
waiting time, non-value added processing, under-utilized people, excess movement,
over preparation etc. to take action and measure the productivity improvement
journey.
Finally by doing all the above mentioned metrics and measurement if organization
can reduce execution cycle time with expected quality output by 20-30% it will
create immense satisfaction to the investors.

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About the author
Mr. Chandan Lal Patary Currently working as Development
Manager at ABB.
applications across various domains and has successfully
executed many Projects. Chandan has worked on domain like
Healthcare, Aerospace, Building automation, Power automation
under real time mission critical
development. Chandan has 14 years of IT experience. He is certified PMP from
2008 and he is a Green Belt certified holder. Chandan is an agile practioner and
Certified Scrum Master. Chandan holds a Bachelor’s
Technology (NIT-Agartala) in Electrical Engineering. He has completed one year
Executive General Management program from IIM
Manager at ABB. He has deep experience in developing Software
under real time mission critical product development to large scale application
Certified Scrum Master. Chandan holds a Bachelor’s from National Institute of
Agartala) in Electrical Engineering. He has completed one year
Executive General Management program from IIM-Bangalore in 2007.
He has deep experience in developing Software
product development to large scale application
from National Institute of
Agartala) in Electrical Engineering. He has completed one year
Bangalore in 2007.

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