Are we ready to embrace Cloud Computing?

It is safe to say that by now most of us have either heard or read about the Cloud Computing model, so as a quick overview, Cloud Computing is a model for the delivery of computing solution as a service than a product.  Looking at it from a utility perspective, companies would pay for metered consumption of IT services.   Cloud computing can be either private or public.  As the names may suggest, public clouds (e.g. Amazon Web Services, Apple iCloud, and Google applications) deliver IT services using shared infrastructure, where as with the private clouds, the client organization is fully responsible for setting up their infrastructure, maintaining and managing it. 

Organizations are continually looking to mitigate issues associated with high availability of their business process systems and other critical systems.  They typically achieve this by increasing their capital investments in IT (procurement of additional network hardware, virtualized network infrastructure, or a hybrid model), and hiring specialized IT staff to support their infrastructure.  Given the current state of the global economy, organizations are increasingly being pressured to cut cost, while increasing innovation and remaining competitive.  Cloud computing model provides an opportunity for organization to lowers IT barriers to driving innovation.  According to a research by McKinsey & Co., cloud computing can cost twice as much as in-house IT infrastructure, which works to the advantage of small and medium sized companies (2009, p. 19-27).  The reason being the small companies don't have the resources to develop internal  IT infrastructure so financially speaking it provides a decent one stop managed solution for them. On the flip side large organizations have the resources to setup their internal infrastructure  (private cloud or any mix of the computing models) and allocate costs associated with staffing and resources to divisons or business units within the organization.   Viability of cloud computing solution depends on cost transparency, security and compliance.   

 There are 3 Categories of Cloud Computing:

1. Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – In this situation the client organization simply wants to take advantage of the infrastructure provided in the cloud, and they have internal IT expertise.
2. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) – Client organization can utilize the existing cloud-based platform to develop their own custom application (e.g. Java, .Net, etc)
3. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – Largest growing cloud market.  Suite of applications reside within the cloud.

Pros/Cons of adopting a cloud computing model

 Pros:

• Customers rent the use of technology instead of purchasing, shifting IT from a combination of capital and operating expense to an operating expense only.
• Vendors would be responsible for maintaining, backup, supporting the infrastructure
• Fast, flexible, scalable, efficient, inexpensive and ease of access

Cons:

• Public clouds may not provide the required security for all organizations
• Creation of private clouds on the other hand would provide a much more tailored solution to the organizations, but at a very high cost.
• There are some regulatory barriers to entry for public clouds
  • US Health Insurance Probability and Accountability Act, has specific and strict requirements for organizations handling personal health data.
  • European Union (EU) prohibits transfer of data to countries outside Europe without prior consent.
  • Reliability on the uptime of network
  • No standardized architectural model, so instead client organizations need to be aware of a set of approaches to adopting a cloud computing model.
  • Cost of process change

Some of you may have some interesting insight on this topic and to get you started, consider the following questions:

1. What is your experience working with a SaaS solution?
2. In your opinion what are some of the business implications on full adoption of cloud computing model?
3. How would you manage governance in a cloud computing scenario?

John Shayegan, MBA, PMP 

Communications Manager, CWCC PMI

So what is Lean?

All too often we hear the buzz words Lean, Lean Culture, Kaizen, and Continuous Improvement, so let’s begin by discussing the foundation of Lean Manufacturing.

In 1914 Henry Ford implemented a systematic method for large scale assembling and manufacturing of automobiles through effective use interchangeable parts and sequencing of steps, which later became known as the Ford Production System (FPS).  The strength of FPS was keeping inventories on hand low, but weak in providing variety.  In 1930s a team lead by Kiichiro Toyoda at Toyota incorporated a number of simple innovations into Henry Ford’s FPS model, in order to provide more variety and continuity within the manufacturing process flow.  Toyota shifted focus from having to look at individual units within the assembly line, to an interconnected system, or more formally referred to as the Toyota Production System (TPS).  Toyota concluded that making small improvements at each step within the production line, ranging from automation, built-in quality checks, optimum sizing of the machines, to effective inventory management lead to a faster throughput, and ultimately a lower unit cost.

So is this all there is to Lean? With the downturn in the global economies, organizations are striving to cut cost, while increasing their yield, sales, and the overall profitability. Today the concept of Lean is more and more adopted by organization, in order to rethink their entire business process, working from bottom to the top, finding opportunities for improvement.  Making a transition towards a lean environment begins by having everyone on board and promoting an environment where suggestions on continuous improvement are welcomed from all levels, regardless of their position within the organization. From my experience as a project manager, continuous improvement/lean initiatives rely heavily on cross-functional teams working collectively to get to the root cause of current issues and inefficiencies, and finding more efficient ways of completing those tasks considering all variables that would contribute to an optimum solution. 

It is important to note that while we may think of lean initiatives as projects, by definition they are considered to be continuous in nature.  According to PMBOK, “A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.  The temporary nature of project indicates a definite beginning and end.[i]” That said there are many projects initiated from lean initiatives with specific deliverables and pre-defined time frame for completion. So when working on lean projects, managing scope is very important to in order to avoid new proposed changes being introduced into the project, and resulting in an open ended activity.

What tends to trigger a need for a change in lean initiatives is the outcome of a detailed value-stream mapping, which is essentially a detailed walk-through of the entire business process (both physical and process maps), and questioning every step along the way, analyzing the flow of product and data.  Ultimately what the value stream mapping task accomplishes is the identification of non-value added activities.  These are activities that don’t bring any value to the customer.

In my organization, after having completed our value-stream mapping task and making a number of process improvements, we determined that the flow of data through our current business process systems which is a mix of an ERP system and a number of custom applications, needed to be streamlined through implementation of a standardized solution tailored specifically to our operations.   As a Project Manager, I am tasked with managing the implementation of an enterprise middleware application called the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) which interfaces with our ERP system.  Implementation of the MES would ultimately eliminate the need for having to maintain and support several custom applications and also provide a paperless business process system.  Information Technology plays an integral role in supporting our lean initiative through application integration and business process automations.  In a nut shell in lean initiatives focus is placed on business continuity, removal of redundancies, non-value added activities, and developing a smoother and interconnected business process.      

There is countless number of books and articles published on this topic, but sharing our experience in this area would be very valuable to all members.  To get you started with the thought process, consider these questions:  

1. Is Lean synonymous for Lean Manufacturing?
2. Can you think of some of the benefits of promoting a lean culture in your organization?
3. How do you envision Lean benefiting Finance, IT, Operations, and Engineering?
4. As a project manager, what are some of the things that come to your mind when managing projects associated with lean/continuous improvement.

John Shayegan, MBA, PMP 

Communications Manager, CWCC PMI

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[i]PMBOK version 4. Page 5

Update on Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 08:43PM by John Shayegan

I agree with Lucas, Lean and Agile Software Development definitely share some common principles but in my opinion there are some philosophical differences between the two. Lean is much more general in its scope and can be tailored to just about any organizational function or industry.  On the other hand Agile Software Development has a much more specific scope and doesn't get into the business context, in which software development is taking place.

John

Update on Saturday, November 5, 2011 at 08:52PM by John Shayegan

Milen thanks for your insight on applying Lean concepts to Projects!  Integrating lean into project management is challenging for sure, but in my opinion certain principles can be adopted.   Couple of items worth consideration which I have incorporated into my project are:

• Assigning certain resources with leadership tasks who would in turn oversee tasks carried out by a number of team members.  For me this has been very helpful in simplifying the timing in gaining the project status updates from each team member. 
• One of the other measures that I have taken in my current project, is reducing the number of vendors and consultants that I would have to directly manage. I have accomplished this by working with certain vendors and consultants to establish partnerships with other 3rd parties involved in the project.  In my specific situation this has helped us with communication and procurement.

You Lead People, You Manage Things, But You Can't Manage Time

The Canadian West Coast Chapter of the PMI (CWCC-PMI) organizes monthly events which have seen a steady increase in participation throughout the last few years. Last January we invited Greg Campeau to give a talk on Time Management for Project Managers. Greg specializes in teaching leadership principles that govern both personal and organizational effectiveness. He spent 15 years working for Cadbury and became a prominent senior manager. In 1991 he quit a comfortable corporate career to launch Campeau Learning. Greg has since been studying, reading and educating people around him with a rare passion.

It was a real honor for our chapter to receive Greg for the second time in two years. Our members were looking forward to his talk, a fact revealed by the impressive turnout, the highest since our inception in 1979, with 203 people in total. The luxury of the venue, the Four Seasons in downtown Vancouver, and of the meal set the stage for a great evening and contributed to our high expectations. Greg did not disappoint as he entertained, educated and encouraged all of us to reflect more.

Greg used provocative statements such has “there is no such a thing as time management” and “you are going up the ladder, but your ladder is against the wrong wall.” I’m sure these statements resonate with you as much as they did with us as we live this hectic, demanding, fast paced environment that is professional Project Management.

Greg included a mix of ancient Greek philosophy, statistics, psychology and modern thinkers’ research in his talk in order to inspire and educate. He struck an excellent balance between the theory behind the general principles and practical advice that audience members could use in their careers. Greg was a great help in encouraging us to focus on important tasks and in giving creative and clever advice on how to increase our efficiency and effectiveness.

At the end of the evening, positive comments and feedback flowed from our members as they expressed their appreciation for Greg’s talk. We are always happy to put informative events together for our members to enjoy. We try to have at least one event a month and we invite you to join us. We would also love to hear feedback from you about our past events as well as any ideas for future events.

In the meantime, if you’re thinking about sharpening your axe, networking with other professional Project Managers in Vancouver, and acquiring PDUs at the same time, come and join us on May 18th for our next event on Instilling an Effective Vision Throughout Your Firm.

**Update: Greg will be our Keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in June **

Recommended readings by Greg:

• First Things First by Stephen Covey
• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• Any books by Peter Drucker

Would you like to be kept in the loop about what’s happening in your PMI Local Chapter? Connect with us on Twitter and LinkedIn today!

New Website, New Approach

Over the past several years the pmi.bc.ca website has grown into somewhat of a behemoth, and it was time to tame it.  This new website had a number of goals:

1. No member log in -- in reviewing the information we had on our old site, we determined that nothing was required to be behind a password-protected login.  So everything is open to members.
2. Update and improve the information architecture
3. Eliminate dated information
4. Update the look and feel
5. Put in place a simpler content management system
6. Stop using the site as a document management system for Chapter operations

The new site is now up and running, and we think it has met these goals well. It's not perfect yet -- we'll continue to make changes over the next several weeks and get those final bits cleaned up, but we hope you like it.