Forthcoming Vaasa PMI Breakfast events 2009September Vaasa PM Club/Levon Instituutti October Wärtsilä Power Plants November Open December ABB Highlights from the latest Vaasa sessions
18th The topic of the august meeting was “Customer satisfaction during the project execution and in the end of the project”. Our host was Wärtsilä Services and warm-up presentation was given by Tero Karjalainen. There were 20 professionals joining the meeting. Tero presented the CROL tool which is used for measuring customer satisfaction in Wärtsilä. It is an electronic questionnaire which will be sent to the customer in different phases of the project. The purpose is to follow-up systematically customer feedback and to take necessary actions in order to increase the satisfaction level. It was discussed if this kind of tool with electronic questionnaires is the correct way of tracking customer satisfaction? Also the fact that sometimes it is very difficult to get answers from the customers might tell us something of the issue. Do we ask right questions from the customer point of view? What is the value add for the customer for answering? Do we ask from the right persons and in the right time? There can be criticism given to this kind of questionnaires, but in the end what matters is how we really use this tool as a tool to serve the customer. The important questions are then how do we respond and react to the customer feedback? Do customers trust us to take care of the problems in case those are indicated through the questionnaires? Do we really listen and care of the customer needs? Based on the participant’s experiences the customer satisfaction has been on a very high level on those projects, when there have been enough regular and personal (face-to-face/phone) communication with the customer in order to follow-up the satisfaction level during the project execution.
17th The meeting was arranged together with Wärtsilä Industrial Operations (WIO). The discussed topics were 1) “Lessons learned from a 2 years old PMO” and 2) "Project portfolio management in product development and operational development". There were 16 participants joining the session. Kim Strömbäck from WIO Project Management Office opened the discussion on project management offices role in the organizations by giving a presentation of WIO-PMO and their main role & tasks. Based on the research in many companies PMO is seen as a bureaucracy provider, whose members speak “foreign” language that rest of the organisation does not understand. Also the value of PMO for the organization is not easy to prove without real metrics. It was discussed about methods which could help to change the imago of PMO. PMOs have to do internal marketing and define & communicate their role and responsibilities very clearly. It was proposed that PMO should have a program charter with clear long term vision & goal, benefit expectations & realization plan and metrics defined. It was also discussed that PMO needs to be closer to the customers, e.g. Project Managers to be able to support them more in daily project work, identify further development needs by listening the customers and their challenges, and really “walk the talk”. As second discussion topic, closely related to PMO, Suvi Kela presented a project in a starting phase to develop project portfolio management for product and operational development projects. It was mainly discussed on basics of project portfolio management; what does project portfolio management methodology consists of, why to establish it, how it could be started and where to focus in the beginning?
16th The meeting was hosted by ABB. Malin Mannervaara gave presentation of ABB´s Project Portal, which is a collaboration tool used for Customer Projects. 15 professionals from The purpose of the collaboration tool is to share project related information within project team and other defined project stakeholders. The goal is to have same information available at the same time for all project stakeholders regardless of where they are located. The purpose is to get people to share their knowledge more actively, speed up communication flow and reduce work amount when information is more easily available and shared. Currently the tool is used mainly as a document storage/library for supporting project communication, but also project related announcements, news and events are published there. It is also possible to share tasks and have virtual discussions related to project. The tool is relatively new still and faced challenges are how to get people to change their old way-of-working and become regular users to get the benefits from the tool. User guidelines and trainings are needed to support the correct use of the tool as a real, project collaboration/ cooperation/communication tool.
15th Vaasa PMI Breakfast meeting on April 14, 09The meeting was arranged together with Vaasa PM Club. Due to the last minute speaker cancellation the pre planned discussion topic was changed. 12 professionals joined together to discuss more on requirement management as part of project scope management. Katja Rajaniemi from ABB gave a presentation on "Information system tool support for project control - case requirements control". In R&D projects, e.g. in new product development projects company's requirement management process and requirement management (RM) tools play very essential role. It starts with deep identification of customer's real needs and wants; how clear and correct are we able to define the scope in the beginning of the project? During the development process requirement information is collected from different sources and is transferred between different parties within the company. RM tool brings visibility when all requirements are clearly documented and it is also easier to follow-up and report different kind of requirement information later on. It was discussed also requirement prioritisation process, requirement change management and linkages to costs, project manager's role to manage the RM process and focusing of development actions into correct ones vs. companies' competitiveness etc. 14th Vaasa PMI Breakfast meeting on March 26, 09The meeting was hosted by Wärtsilä Ship Power and the meeting topic was: "By common methodology to common PM tool". The specific focus areas were the tools developed for project planning and monitoring within "Ship Shape Program". 15 professionals from Vaasa area companies participated in the meeting. Jonas Carlsson from Ship Power gave first a short introduction to Wärtsilä Ship Shape Program, which has been launched by Ship Power Management team a year ago. Kaj Småros then gave a presentation of the tools that have been developed for project planning and monitoring and are now tested in real projects. The main tool presented was WBS tool, how it is created; what kind of structure and what kind of reports you get out of it. The purpose of this tool is to provide transparency for the whole project management organization scattered around the world and to control & monitor better projects progress, schedules, where to focus resources etc. It was discussed that same kind of tools are essential in all companies and a lot of money and time is invested to develop these. Functioning tools and project control organization comes very critical when Project Managers are running several projects simultaneously. 13th Vaasa PMI Breakfast meeting on February 19, 09We discussed first how to develop PMI Breakfast meetings in Vaasa region, and about possibility to have participants to attend virtually, using Live-meeting for instance. It was decided that we may try it first in one of the meetings to see how it works out. Annual schedule of the meetings was discussed. It was decided to have arrangements (meeting room, coffee and topic) rotated between companies and Wärtsilä units, but Chapter and PM Club sending the invitations. The following schedule was agreed: January Vaasa PM Club/Levon Instituutti February Wärtsilä Power Plants March Wärtsilä Ship Power April Vaasa PM Club/Levon Instituutti May ABB June Wärtsilä WIO July No Meeting August Wärtsilä Service September Vaasa PM Club/Levon Instituutti October Wärtsilä Power Plants November Open December ABB Discussion continued on topic of Team collaboration and communication in virtual teams. Different aspects of team communication were discussed and opinions shared: Communication planning, Project team meeting schedule, use of different tools for communication, cultural and language differences, team set-up vs split of work packages etc. A presentation of an IT company was reviewed; they have systematic routine approach to communication around three main aspects: a) 2 days face-to-face project Start-Up meeting for project planning and to align the project team, b) Issue Tracking c) Daily short conference call meeting where there are only three questions on agenda. 12th Vaasa PM Club Meeting on January 27, 09Vaasa PM Club arranged meeting on January 27, 09. Link to the presentation materials: http://www.uwasa.fi/levon/johtaminen/toiminta_johtaminen/pm_club/ |