Tempting Templates Theyre Free and Effective

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Tempting Templates Theyre Free and Effective!

• Kathy Schwalbe
• and
• Bill Hunt
• November 21, 2003
• schwalbe_at_augsburg.edu
• www.kathyschwalbe.com

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Personal Backgrounds - Kathy

• B.S. in math, 1981 (before Notre Dame and most
  colleges offered computer science or MIS
  degrees), MBA in 1986, Ph.D. in education in
  1996, PMP in 1998
• First job was as a project manager in the Air
  Force working on advanced communications systems
• Worked on many projects to develop and install
  several types of systems
• Now enjoy teaching, writing, and mentoring others
• Personality profile ENTJ, driver, high need for
  achievement

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Personal Backgrounds - Bill

• BS/MS in electrical and computer engineering,
  University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1984
• Engineer, manager, and project manager for IBM,
  Western Digital, Seagate, and JDS Uniphase
• Worked on product development for disk drives,
  data storage subsystems, and opto-electronic
  transceivers
• Increased project management training after
  experiencing several failed projects
• Personality profile INTJ, like to discover
  solutions and drive them to completion

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Presentation Overview

• What are templates?
• Why use templates?
• Sample Templates
• U of M student project results
• Suggested references
• Q A

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What Are Templates?

• Templates are documents or files that provide an
  outline or format for creating documentation
• Many professionals dont like to write or ask
  others how to do simple things, and no one
  likes to reinvent the wheel
• Templates make it easier to prepare common
  project documents and use standard tools and
  techniques
• Its important to tailor templates to unique
  project and organizational needs

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Why Use Templates?

• Companies that excel in project delivery
  capability
• Build an integrated project management toolbox
  (use standard/advanced PM tools, lots of
  templates)
• Develop streamlined, consistent project delivery
  processes

Dragan Milosevic, Portland State University,
Delivering Projects What the Winners Do, PMI
Conference Proceedings, November 2001
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Why the Improvements in IT Project Success Rates?
"The reasons for the increase in successful
projects vary. First, the average cost of a
project has been more than cut in half. Better
tools have been created to monitor and control
progress and better skilled project managers with
better management processes are being used. The
fact that there are processes is significant in
itself. The Standish Group, "CHAOS 2001 A
Recipe for Success" (2001)
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Sample Templates

• Information Technology Project Management, Third
  Edition, includes
• 34 templates used in the book
• information for accessing 333 free templates from
  other sources
• You can access all of these template files for
  free from www.kathyschwalbe.com
• You can also access templates at the companion
  Web site for the text at www.course.com/mis/schwal
  be

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Sample Templates for Initiating Projects (in text)

• Weighted Decision Matrix
• Business Case
• Financial Analysis
• Project Charter
• Kickoff Meeting

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Sample Templates for Planning Projects (in text)

• Team Contract
• Scope Statement
• Statement of Work
• Request for Proposal
• Stakeholder Analysis
• Software Project Management Plan
• Work Breakdown Structure
• Gantt Chart

• Network Diagram
• Project Cost Estimate Overview
• Quality Assurance Plan
• Pareto Diagram
• Project Organizational Chart
• Responsibility Assignment Matrix
• Resource Histogram
• Stakeholder Analysis for Project Communications

Note Other templates available in the text and
on www.kathyschwalbe.com
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Now to Bill

• Thanks for the great work your team did!

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Background on Project

• Done as part of IE5541, Project Management,
  course
• Counted for 25 or grade
• Project idea suggested by professor (Kathy)
• Four students volunteered, all working adults
  taking the course virtually

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Tempting Templates Project Objectives

• Search for project management templates from the
  Internet and/or literature
• Provide an organized list of templates grouped by
  web site, process group, and knowledge area
• Provide a qualitative evaluation of web sites
• Provide recommendations for the list of templates
  to be included in the appendix of Schwalbes text

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Research ActivitiesThree Phase Approach

• Search for Web Sites
• Team members assigned different search engines
• Obtain a list of web sites that provide (free)
  project management templates
• Organize the list by number and cost of templates
  found
• Gather Template Information
• Team members assigned different web sites
• Collect detailed information on each free
  template
• Organize the list of templates by web site,
  process group and knowledge area
• Adjust the plan to meet sponsors needs
• Present results and receive feedback from sponsor
• Adjust the plan to meet sponsors needs

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Team Members Photos
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Team Responsibilities
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Summary of Results

• The team found 333 free templates and organized
  them by process group and knowledge area
• We set initial guidelines for each team member to
  start the Internet search, then quickly recorded
  information on each hit
• Prioritized and ranked sites based on number of
  total and unique templates
• We evaluated many sites and came up with a top
  ten list

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Template Distribution byProcess Group and
Knowledge Area
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Number of TemplatesFound by Knowledge Area
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Percentage of Templates Found by Process Group
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Students Top Ten Free Template Sites
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Project Success

• Project success as defined in our scope
  statement
• The project will be deemed successful if the
  project is completed by 4/29/03, the PM Template
  Report is delivered to Kathy Schwalbe and some of
  the report content is included in the 3rd edition
  of her book.
• Sponsor feedback
• I think your team did a great job on the
  project. The results of your research will be
  used by a lot of people. My reviewers really
  liked the new appendix with the templates.
• Objectives were attained, the project was a
  success!

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Student Project Milestones
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Project Management Tools

• MS Project
• Used for Time, Cost, Scope, Human Resource
  management
• Very helpful tool. Allowed us to be effective
  team members. Has more functionality than
  required for a project of this size
• Communications
• Web page, E-mail, Instant Messenger,
  Teleconferencing
• Effective communication tools for our virtual
  team
• Used several templates provided in class
  (charter, scope statement, etc.)

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Earned Value Analysis(chart on next page)

• Saved project baseline at beginning of project.
• Assumed 30/hour labor rate for all team members.
• Earned value chart shows us on-time and slightly
  over-budget.
• Our mid-semester review showed us going
  over-budget. We adjusted by refining the
  original project scope and by using free slack
  built into the original schedule.

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What Went Right?

• Spent a lot of time in the planning phase
• Spent time, as a team, with the sponsor
  clarifying the charter
• Productive team working sessions to create an
  effective WBS
• Tasks balanced among team members. Tasks matched
  to team members with appropriate skills.
• Very high levels of ownership and schedule
  integrity
• The work was meaningful. Project topic applied
  directly to the course content
• Schedule was able to accommodate a mid-course
  redirection in activities

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What Went Wrong?

• Communicating with each other was sometimes
  difficult because we couldnt easily find a
  common meeting time/place
• The amount of work was underestimated

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What Did the Team Learn?

• We learned a lot about project management and
  templates
• Gained appreciation of the wide use of project
  management techniques in various industries
• Gained experience how to do a general web
  research project
• Learned about advanced features of MS Project
• Earned Value
• HTML output, reports
• Learned about virtual teams from both the project
  team and the content report

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Project Web Site
Note You can link to this site from
www.kathyschwalbe.com
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Project Gantt Chart
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Quote from Kathys Book

• In the spring of 2003, four students in a project
  management course at the University of Minnesota
  did a group project to help find and evaluate
  templates. Bill Hunt was the project manager, and
  his team members included Heather Fox, Kinwai
  Chan, and Roy Musselman. All four students took
  the class in a virtual environment. I was the
  sponsor for the project and their instructor for
  the course, which met one night a week from
  mid-January through early May.
• In their preliminary project report, one of the
  first product-related deliverables for the
  project, the students reported finding 54 unique
  Web sites that offered project management
  templates. Thirty-five of these sites offered
  free templates with no required registration or
  membership, 11 sites required a registration or
  free membership to access the templates, and 18
  sites required a fee for either membership or for
  direct purchase of the templates. The students
  used several different search engines and entered
  key words like "free project management
  templates" and similar variations.
• Table D-2 provides a count of the templates the
  students found by knowledge area and process
  group. Note that the students found 333
  templates

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Kathys Observations on Templates

• In early 2003 I added templates to my Web site
  for project proposals, team contracts, and scope
  statements, and the quality of student
  assignments/projects improved tremendously
• People like to have more guidance on expectations
  and formats for various project documents, and
  they want the actual files to make their jobs
  easier
• Be sure the templates are useful and not just
  bureaucratic paperwork
• For example, scope statements should describe
  project success criteria. Track that info in the
  status and final project reports

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Check Out the Free Templates!

• Go to www.kathyschwalbe.com and download the free
  template files from her third edition (created in
  Word, Excel, Project, and PowerPoint) and access
  the sites that Bills team found
• If youd like to add more, contact Kathy at
  schwalbe_at_augsburg.edu

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Questions or Comments?