CoffeeCAST – #7 – Project Management Discussion

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Welcome to the 7th Episode of Coffee Conversations with Stephen Hayward of Project X.

It’s the first Tuesday of April, we all made it through April fools day.  Today I have with me Mark Dymond, Director of Application Services at IBM who is responsible for one of their largest Canadian outsourcing clients.  I have known Mark for a while and he and Graham worked together over the years.  So welcom Mark, today we are discussing the following:

  1. Thoughts on Program and Project Management
    – Keys to Project Management
    – Communication
    – Clarity
    – Key Performance Indicators
    – Differences in the role between Program and Project Management
  2. Delivery Models – Agile vs Waterfall
  3. Offshoring as a part of your team

Please enjoy, feel free to comment and have a great day!

Download cc_7_project_management.mp3

Our Podcast is also available on iTunes as well as here for download.

PS – the discussion are Mark’s personal thoughts and not that of IBM proper

  1. Stephen Reply

    Suresh,
    Thanks for the comment. I am working on changing some of my equipment to try and address this.
    I appreciate you taking the time to comment. I hope the content was of interest.

  2. SURESH Reply

    Future podcasts if you could avoid the noise level(which is high) it could help the listener a lot.
    Best Regards,
    Suresh

  3. Stephen Reply

    SLA measurement is a tricky business. There are some companies that have systems for measuring SLAs. They are good and emerging to be more robust. The challenge is when there are many. Such as the example Mark gave, how do you do root cause analysis on 250+ performance inicators. As with all contracts, the simpler the better and with the escalation you have mentioned this can work well.

  4. Jim Reply

    I enjoyed your chat with Mark. I find him a very practical and down-to-earth fellow. Thanks.
    I did get lost in a few things because it presumed knowledge I had about methodolgies that I only know the names. However it would take to long to explain them in detail.
    The service level agreement issue is certainly one that everybody, who is handing over a chunk of their business to another party, has to consider. I found that developing three levels of service that created opportunity for escalation if things were not going well helped in the negotiation. First level, corrective measures taken, second level, escalation to senior management, third level, lawyers involved.
    The issue with the measures is coming up with practical measures that are easy to monitor. Maybe providing monitoring of service levels might be a business opportunity for somebody. An objective third party would add an interesting dynamic to the project.

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