Managing Successful Programmes

As Nick Spargo points out in the comments these links are now dead. If anyone can point to the modern equivalent, that would be appreciated.

A series of documents from the UK Directorate for Defence Acquisition about Benefits Realisation Management

• BENEFITS REALISATION MANAGEMENT – “All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask” [Word]
• Example benefits strategy [Word]
• Example of a populated benefits model [Powerpoint]
• Example of an initial benefits brief [Powerpoint]
• Example of analysis tools [Excel]
• Example of a benefits ranking model [Excel]
• Example of a Benefits Profile [Word]
• Example “Measures and Owners” brief [Powerpoint]
• Template for capturing measures and owners [Word]
• Simple Benefits Tracking Document [Word]

Via Brad Appleton’s excellent post of links to Agile Programme Management resources, a paper on Combining Agile Methods with Stage-Gate Project Management.

Based on studies in three engineering companies, the conclusion is that are benefits from both the management and engineering perspective.

Good things:

• Agile method add microplanning and day-to-day control to the stage-gate methods
• Engineering teams felt more in control of their work
• Stage-gate approach improves ability of agile methods to interact with other engineering teams, other functions (such as marketing) and senior management.

Things to watch out for:

• Need to manage expectations
• Challenge on large projects of finding a “customer representative” as required by Agile methods

I spent last week on the MSP course.

The trainers were good, the group size was good (9 of us), and the other delegates were an interesting and friendly bunch from a range of industries. Between us we covered print, broadcast and online media, telecomms, manufacturing, software, and a couple of flavours of consultancy.

I’d recommend this course to anyone who was interested in MSP - the training is well-adapted for adult learning, and has a clear emphasis on providing the skills to get through the exams. It is however an intensive week - in particular on the first three evenings there was two to three hours of homework each night. The homework is framed as “optional”, but as a large part of it is practice in answering exam questions, I would imagine that it would be hard to get through the exams without doing the homework.
I managed to pass the Foundation exam without much difficulty, but I won’t know the result of the Intermediate and Practitioner papers for about 8 weeks – apparently the APMG examiners are over-worked at present!

The material is still very “close to me” in my mind, so too early to reflect properly on what I have learned.