Akshaya Centre of Excellence Striving to transform results

ACE – company profile

About ACE

q We are a consulting and training firm providing software delivery excellence services

q Our mission is to “Transform Results” and not just rest at applying methodologies. Our logo conveys that insights possessed by our team produces results to the business units (In the logo, tree represents business units and fruits represent results for the business unit)

q Unique characteristic of our organization is that all the members of the team are hands-on people who have been highly successful in their delivery roles and are now into consulting and training to pass on their insights. This is what enables us to be confident of transforming results

ACE Contact details

q Website: http://www.acoe.in

q Email: enquiry@acoe.in, nagaraja.gundappa@acoe.in

q Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/aceitpm

q Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/aceiptm

ACE service portfolio – categories

• Strategic  training  programs  targeted  to  

improve  specific  metrics  

• FSPS  –  for  future  and  new  project  managers  

• ACEPMP  for  experienced  PMs  

• Vendor  capability  assessment  for  outsourcing  

• Competency  assessment  for  project  

managers  

• Offshore  project  health  monitoring  

• EsFmaFon  accuracy  improvement  

• Requirement  clarity  and  completeness  improvement   Consulting

services Assessment

services

Customized training

Packaged training

ACE service portfolio – Target audience view

• ACEPMP  –  a  9  separate-­‐days  package  of  8  courses  for  experienced  PMs  

• FSPS  (Framework  of  SoNware  Project  Success)  –  2  day  course  for  future  and  new  project  managers  

• Project  manager  competency  assessment  

• Strategic  programs  targeted  to  improve  

specific  metrics  

• Offshore  project  health  monitoring  

• Vendor  capability  assessment  for  outsourcing  

IS managers who

outsource

Business unit heads of

IT service firms

Experienced project

managers

Future project

managers

Services for global IS managers

q Offshore project health monitoring

§  We engage with the offshore project in key stages throughout the life cycle and assess how well, the project is shaping towards successful completion. We use pre-built health-check guidelines to carry out assessment. For instance, the interventions would determine –

•  If requirement elicitation is resulting in clear and complete requirements

•  If design is meeting the non-functional requirements

•  If the project is on track for scheduled completion

•  If test scenarios considered are adequate and so on.

IS managers in global organizations that have outsourced their projects, need better visibility and control over the project. In certain contexts, they face shortage of on-site staff and are over-dependent on the off-shore team. This over dependence poses a high risk and consequences of project failure can be very high. In such situations, ACE consultant can be thought of as an additional off-shore arm or the off-shore eyes and ears for the customer to gain a better visibility and control over the projects and maximize possibilities of successful completion.

Improve project

success rate with better visibility and control over outsourced

projects

…Services for global IS managers

q Vendor capability assessment

§  Not all vendors possess high capability in all aspects of delivery. You have to choose the ones with highest capability on parameters that matter most to you. ���We help you to select your vendors by assessing their delivery capability using our pre-built assessment model

•  Global IT shops looking forward to outsource to India can take our help in their RFI and RFP process to select the vendors most suited to their needs

•  Smaller organizations looking forward to outsource to India, but cannot afford to go with the big names would find this service especially useful. There are many capable service providers who offer services at an affordable price but are not highly visible. They can be spotted, assessed and relied upon based on our services.

Smarter outsourcing – • Reach low-visibility vendors who are affordable and deliver high quality • Choose vendors most suited to your needs

Services for business unit heads / delivery heads

q ACE offers services that help delivery heads to overcome their challenges and meet their objectives

q Delivery heads / Business unit heads are responsible for a number delivery results such as

§  Customer satisfaction and repeat business

§  Increased profits by minimizing overruns in effort, schedule and cost

§  Consistency in quality across the organization unit

q They face many challenges to deliver these results

§  Shortage of staff skilled in project management

§  Inadequacy of processes to ensure estimation accuracy and good requirement management

q ACE services help the delivery heads to meet these challenges and achieve results

Services for business unit heads - assessments

q Project manager competency assessment

§  The BU head can benchmark the capabilities of the their project management staff against industry standards and plan their capability improvement programs

§  ACE offers a range of assessment methodologies prescribed by the PMCD (Project Manager Competency Development) framework of PMI. They include

•  Objective type questions that test both knowledge and experiential insights

•  Simulation workshops

•  Interviews

•  Project deliverable review

Benchmark the capability

of your project

management staff

…Services for business unit heads – improving delivery results

q Targeted metric improvement

§  ACE offers packages of programs targeted to improve parameters such as estimation accuracy, requirement stability, schedule adherence etc.

§  The package involves training, mentoring, process implementation and tracking

§  To improve estimation accuracy, ACE uses originally developed, deliverable-based estimation methodologies such as MVC points.

§  A requirement engineering framework has been developed by ACE and this framework is used to bring about an improvement in requirement stability across project teams *

§  ACE has published procedures to create effective schedules and these procedures are implemented to help project teams to ensure better schedule adherence

* Requirement stability is important even for Agile projects especially in the fixed price project context. Agile experts recommend that high level requirements be known upfront to be able to estimate and plan the project and details of the requirements can be explored during specific iterations / sprints. Secondly, requirements should not change within an iteration / sprint. It requires best practices to ensure this requirement stability even in the context of Agile projects and ACE services help in achieving this stability.

…Services for business unit heads – staff development

q Strategic project management staff capability development

§  In certain contexts, it is difficult or ineffective or too costly to implement complete pre-packaged training programs for project managers. In such circumstances a customized competency development program is more suitable

§  Customized programs are strategic in nature. They follow a multi-step program starting with assessment, choosing specific areas of competency development, targeting competency levels, training, mentoring and measuring on-the-job performance.

§  Customization also helps in administering training in a combination of multiple formats that include class room training, e-learning, web based case study discussions and so on.

Assessments Selecting

competencies and levels

Training Metric

improvement target

Action plan implementation and mentoring

Project performance

measurements

Improved delivery

capability - Reduce project

costs and increase customer

satisfaction

Services for business unit heads q Fixed price project profitability

§  Delivery units face stiff challenges in making fixed price projects profitable mainly because of 3 challenges – estimation accuracy, requirement instability and schedule overruns.

§  The F3P program targets these three areas to create a turn-around in profitability

•  Training the staff in deliverable-based estimation methodologies and institutionalizing these methodologies to achieve estimation accuracy

•  A requirement engineering framework is used to train the staff in a range of key practices needed to ensure requirement stability *

•  A well-researched procedure for schedule development and tracking for better schedule adherence

* Requirement stability is important even for Agile projects especially in the fixed price project context. Agile experts recommend that high level requirements be known upfront to be able to estimate and plan the project and details of the requirements can be gone into during specific iterations / sprints. Secondly, requirements should not change within an iteration / sprint. It requires best practices to ensure this requirement stability even in the context of Agile projects and ACE services help in achieving this stability.

Project cost saving up to

10%

Estimation accuracy of

>90%

Programs for senior project managers

q ACEPMP (Advanced Courses for Excellence in Project management Practice)

§  A package of 8 individual courses of total 9 days duration

§  The courses cover Requirement Engineering, Estimation, Project planning, scheduling and tracking, Risk management and Testing

§  Target audience is practicing project managers who have at least 6 months of project management experience and gears them up to successfully plan and deliver large, complex, global projects.

§  Rich with practices chosen from large successful projects, this series fast forwards experiential learning by 2 to 4 years

Gear up to deliver multi-million dollar,

fixed price projects

Programs for new and future project managers

q FSPS (Framework of Software Project Success) –��� a 2 day workshop

§  Primes a to-be project manager with birds-eye-view of PMBoK, CMM and takes them through a number of key practices throughout the software life cycle

§  Key practices teach how to ensure estimation accuracy, requirement stability, schedule adherence, risk management among others

§  Uses real-life project case studies to ensure that participants can apply the practices to real project scenarios

§  Key practices chosen from successful global projects and validated through cutting-edge research reports and books.

Make a spectacular

entry into PM role and

ensure glaring initial success

Profiles of ACE team q Nagaraja gundappa

§  LinkedIn profile: in.linkedin.com/in/nagarajagundappa

§  Chief consultant, ACE, 20+ years of software industry experience

§  Before ACE

•  General Manager in Wipro Technologies (1996 – 2008)

•  Project manager in Tata Unisys (Now Tata Infotech) (1993 – 1995)

•  Research Fellow in NAL (1990 – 1993)

§  Awards and Honors

•  Chariman’s award for a project management competency initiative (2007)

•  Group president’s award - 1997

•  Best application award – OMG object world west 97

Profiles – Nagaraja Gundappa q Project management expertise

§  Certified Scrum Master

§  Have delivered significant improvement in delivery results through a project management competency build up program during 2005 - 2008

•  Won the Chairman’s award for this initiative

•  Results delivered - more than 10% reduction in cost overruns and 10 times reduction in field error rate.

§  Have taught software project management courses (Applied PMBoK courses) for over 1200 project managers

§  Have delivered large, complex, global projects successfully to customers such as General Motors, Deloitte and Touche, Dun & Bradstreet

§  Have delivered many presentations at industry forums on estimation, project scheduling and tracking, and project management training

Profiles - Nagaraja

q Other expertise

§  Certified black belt in six steps to six sigma

§  Have been a part of task force implementing CMM

§  Have championed organization-wide component reuse programs at Wipro Technologies and have presented papers on reuse

§  Have lead a J2EE center of Excellence and have groomed more than 60 persons from legacy background to be level-2 e-business technology architects

§  Have carried out significant research in applying Artificial Intelligence techniques in flight control system reconfiguration and have presented papers on these topics.

Thank you