Overview
Today, the e-business world pressures organizations to develop successive releases of products with ever-shorter development life cycles. Organizations are delivering an increasing amount of products and services through their websites and information portals. Projects are kept alive by increasing scope and changing requirements. If organizations want to remain competitive, they need to bring web projects and products to market faster. In an organization without established product and project management methodologies, separate projects blend into one and become unmanageable. However, a project is a “temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result” (PMBOK® Guide 2000). The authors will show that the integrity of the project management model can be maintained to manage the chaos.
The market does not always wait until all the analysis is complete and the best standards are chosen. Furthermore, the market does not always wait for the beginning of the second iteration until after the first release is complete. By overlapping successive release projects and limiting scope, effective project management improves quality, uses the organization's resources more efficiently, and brings product to market faster.
The multiple release web project should take its appropriate place facilitating the product plan. The project manager and the product manager must work closely together so that the product release plan is established synchronously with the planned project release. An effective product plan helps implement multiple release web projects and product releases. Similarly, product management benefits from working together with project management.
A key tenet for the two disciplines working together lies in scope definition. Scope must be defined in general by the product plan; the project plan must limit its scope to what can be accomplished by the next release. Therefore, the product plan defines the overall long-range product scope, and the project plan manages the scope only for the specific release. Both the product and the release project plan need to be adjusted for changes in scope. The scope or priorities of a product plan may change. That change will either increase the scope of a current release, or shift the change to a future release.
The multiple release web project presents some complexities in regard to managing project resources. Each web product release will launch a new project as well. The project manager can keep the people resources from one release project to the next, by carefully planning to overlap release projects. And, because the release projects may overlap, the resources may be splitting their time between two different release projects in the same day, week or month. If the product plan has sufficient foresight, the project manager can plan and reserve resources for future release projects. The knowledge and experience of developers is lost if they are assigned to a different project between releases. Project managers can manage the process and keep the resources if they manage their projects correctly.
Project management brings order to the chaos of managing the rapidly changing e-business world. Marketing's desire to bring new products and services online faster and with consistent reliability can be satisfied if the product and project teams work together.
Project Management Setting
Project management has grown in popularity through the 90s, not because it is the latest business management trend, but because it is an effective tool for meeting the growing needs of the marketplace. The information technology (IT) environment was becoming less controllable. Changing technology, increasingly complex programming, and organizational demands for more, newer, and better applications were prevalent. This new “client server” environment changed the IT/IS world quickly. The time was right for project management. Project managers with long-established techniques and methodologies from the construction and the manufacturing industries began to apply their tools to the IT arena. It was not long until they began establishing methodologies applicable to this new dynamic industry. According to Colleen Andreoli of USAA, “Rapidly changing and increasingly complex technology combined with business demand for quicker solutions revitalized an interest in project management” (Kerzner 1997). The demand and respect for project management today is largely due to the successful application of project management to the needs of IT in the 90s. The challenge before us today is no different than the challenge then. Technology is changing even more rapidly; the demand for better web solutions comes with an increased urgency. The fundamentals of project management remain applicable. “… Traditional Information Systems (IS) project management processes can be adapted to web projects with success” (Tarver 2000). The environment is changing. The kind of project is different. Project managers must deftly adapt and apply their methodologies and techniques to web development.
With web development, the definition of a project has become blurred. Project managers have been assigned to the “give us a web presence” project; even now project managers are assigned to manage “corporate portal” projects. Is a “web presence” project a temporary endeavor? Is a corporate portal project complete when the portal goes online? No. Care is needed to remember the project management fundamentals. Project managers must be careful not to become managers of ongoing processes such as product management, but to keep projects defined and limited. When a project is initiated, project managers habitually create a project scope that includes all aspects of a project. However, in a market where technology and its business requirements change so quickly, it is not in an organization's best interest to scope out an entire corporate portal project. By the time the project is complete, the technology may be too far behind the curve to achieve the original goals. “Ecommerce is even more susceptible to the negative effects of paradigm shifts in software, hardware, communications, equipment, and technology, so management systems must be timely and agile” (Elkins 2000). This is where release management plays a role. Projects need to be limited at the product release level. Managing multiple release projects benefits the organization and the project manager, but to ensure the best chances of success, each project must be limited. The release level is where that limit can occur most effectively.
Background
The Securities industry, like most mature industries, has undergone periods of massive change followed by periods of intense competition, consolidation, and retrenchment. A disruptive force, be it technology, regulatory, or some other macroeconomic or demographic force, shifts the landscape considerably. Established entities unable to cope with change fade away, others adapt, and new entrants, equipped to take advantage of the changes, arrive. The Securities industry is in such a period of massive transition once again. Regulatory changes including decimalization and T+1, and technological changes such as the rise of the Internet are fundamentally changing how firms interact with each other and with their customers.
Over the last 10 years the number of individual investors with funds in the market has risen dramatically. Several factors contribute to this, including: the demise of company-funded pensions, the rise of 401k's, the demographic age of the baby boomers, the increased choices in mutual funds, the long bull market of the 1990s, and the creation of online trading. These factors have shifted trading in equities from the ranks of the wealthy to virtually every socioeconomic class. The increase in traders directly impacts the number of trades occurring. In a business where fees are primarily transaction driven, this increase impacts the revenue potential of the entire industry. When revenue potential increases to the degree that it has in the Securities industry, competition increases accordingly. Broker/dealers look to differentiate themselves from one another, increase their customer bases, and increase their assets under management. Smaller, regional firms try to compete with the national firms, and the national firms try to distinguish themselves from one another. Many broker/dealers look to their clearing firm for assistance in these endeavors.
A clearing firm is an outsourcing provider of services to broker/dealers. There are more than 5,000 broker/dealers in the industry, and a score of clearing firms, with no one clearing firm holding over 20% of the market. Many broker/dealers have historically chosen to self-clear as well.
BNY Clearing Services entered this environment in the fall of 1998. BNY Clearing Services, LLC, a subsidiary of the Bank of New York, was formed from the sale of Everen Securities’ clearing arm to the Bank of New York. As part of Everen, the clearing unit was viewed primarily as a cost center focused on providing services to its parent, Everen Securities. After the sale to the Bank of New York, BNY Clearing Services’ management needed to focus their attention outward to the marketplace and determine who they wanted to be as a collective entity.
With the Bank of New York behind them, executive management set a goal to be a top-tier clearing firm by 2003. The mission of the firm is “helping our customers grow their business.” In order to attain the goal and succeed at the mission, BNY Clearing needed to address external market changes beyond the firm's control and the forced internal changes such as acquisitions and reengineering. CEO Mike Viviano made a decision to help the firm adapt to massive changes in the industry, massive internal growth, and other uncertainties: to focus on project management as a core competency.
Perspective
It is appropriate to discuss the organizational alignment at BNY Clearing Services so that the reader understands the authors’ perspective. The Technology Solutions Management Group, whose manager reports to the CIO, leads the project office. Project managers and business analysts are assigned to projects across all parts of the company. A project manager or business analyst may work on multiple projects at one time depending on the size of the projects.
Product management resides in the Marketing group, which is aligned with the Sales organization. The Technology Solutions Management Group also has product analysts that act as liaisons between IT and the rest of the company. Both product managers and product analysts work with project managers and business analysts on projects.
It is important to note that although the different roles have different responsibilities, one trait is of utmost importance for any of them to be successful: the ability to work across functional boundaries without direct authority over key members of a project.
Methodology
BNY Clearing attempted to utilize both product and project management practices in its Correspondent Desktop project, a browser-based portal available to BNY Clearing's clients. There are several keys to using product or project management practices, individually and collaboratively. First and foremost is executive support. The CEO and CIO both fully supported the use of product and project management methodology to further the corporate strategy.
To build a strategic foundation, BNY Clearing examines key trends in the Securities Industry that the end customer and broker/dealers. BNY Clearing then maps a response and takes a two- to three-year view on these trends. Each one of these responses can become a product, a service, or a suite of products and services.
The product planning process is straightforward. The corporate strategy stimulates opportunity identification and product incubation. Ideas may come from clients, internal resources, market research, vendors, or the analysis of the corporate strategy itself. Opportunity identification may include brainstorming sessions, technology innovation discussions, focus groups, or conference attendance.
If an idea makes it through the product incubation phase, it goes to the Initiate phase, where it is entered into BNY Clearing's Project Office. At this point, the product manager provides a more detailed market and competitor assessment. The product manager also identifies the target client and audience profile in this stage and may conduct field studies. During this stage, the product manager creates a draft of the product plan to include the business plan, essential strategic alliances, and market analysis. The product plan should look forward 18–24 months.
If the project requires IT resources, the project request and aforementioned analysis goes to the IT Governance meeting for approval to go to the next phase. IT Governance is a group of senior executives that meet monthly to determine the priorities for resource allocation for IT. If the project is approved, it moves to the plan phase. In this phase, the product manager works with an assigned business analyst to determine high-level requirements. The project manager works with the product manager to determine the resource required and the cost/benefit. The combination of requirements gathering, resource allocation, and market necessity drives the completion of the product plan, which is the release schedule. The combination drives the decisions on what to offer in Release One, Release Two, etc.
It is important not to confuse the product plan with project management. At BNY Clearing, the product plan should be driven by corporate strategic objectives. The project is driven by the product plan. The strategic plan advises management to build releases and review the strategy on a 90- to 120-day basis. This forces changes to the product plan without interfering with projects too far down the wrong path. The project is the release. This positions the organization to respond quickly and act decisively when opportunities arise. Projects are limited in scope and designed to get to the market quickly. The projects suffer few scope changes because changes are planned at the product level, not the project level.
The scope for the project must be limited at the product release level. The release project comes out of the product plan. To be successful, the project manager many times manages multiple releases, and therefore multiple projects. The project manager should work closely with the product manager to determine the scope and deliverables for each release. Sometimes the project manager needs to adjust scope so that the release can “hit” a date mandated by the product plan. Other times, the product plan incorporates dates mandated by the release project. Product and project management must learn to work together toward the same goal. Bringing the project in on time should not to be taken lightly, especially in the early releases of a web project, where the users’ confidence in future releases and dates is established.
In the process of planning multiple releases, the collaboration of product manager and project manager is at its zenith. The project manager needs a solid understanding of market pressures and overall scope of the plan's individual pieces, and the product manager needs a solid grasp of the effort required to bring the pieces together for completion. The collaboration exists not only to state which features exist on a particular release—although that is paramount—but also, the product and project managers must prioritize and plan for the concurrent release activity of business analysts and programmers. For example, an item considered high priority but requiring a large amount of effort hours might begin immediately even though it will not be completed until Release Three. At the same time, developers may be working on features for Release One while laying groundwork for expanded functionality in Release Two. Careful planning and documentation are required to keep track of all activity.
One example of the planning required for multiple release web projects is the creation of design standards. For the first release, a set of design standards (font, color, icons, etc.) was created and given to the entire team. This set of standards is critical for the web, especially with multiple releases. Without them, any one application may look and work great, but the continuity, intuitiveness, and brand image are tarnished if the web-based application is designed without the holistic view in mind. This is one reason why daily meetings, to be discussed in more detail later, are critical. These meetings are a chance for design discussions to occur that may arise from one release project but impact another.
The release plan, which focuses on what is needed to roll out the product, begins during the planning phase. The release plan addresses all of the things that “productize” an application. Items in a release plan include:
Exhibit 1. Strategy Formulation
• How the product is rolled out internally
• How training, if needed, is offered
• How the product is priced
• How the product is marketed
• How the product is launched to customers
• How the product is supported
• If there are professional service opportunities.
The release plan focuses only on the current release, and the driver for the release plan is the product manager. However, activities in the release plan should be captured as tasks or milestones in the project plan, so the project manager also has responsibility. The product manager generally drives any release plan meetings, while the project manager ensures that tasks are brought to completion at the appropriate times.
The Execute Phase follows the Plan Phase. In the BNY Clearing desktop project, the completion of the field studies and release plan, as well as the subsequent requirements definition, signaled the end of the plan phase. From a product management perspective, the execute phase transitions the focus from the initial design to the launch activity. This does not mean that the design is finished. BNY Clearing brought in customers to do usability testing once the application was ready. Users were given six scenarios that required interaction with the Correspondent Desktop. The users were asked to perform the tasks without asking questions, since the intent was to make the product so intuitive that the user does not need help completing the activity. It is critical to make the user comfortable and explain that this is a test of the designers, not the user.
Completion of usability studies brings about further iterations. During this phase, collaboration between the product and project managers is still a daily event. Daily meetings are scheduled with product management, project management, and developers to discuss any issues that arise or general questions. It is important to schedule these meetings and book the time for the duration of the project rather than wait to schedule. There may be days when a meeting is only five minutes long or it is canceled altogether; however, establishing the habit of meeting daily prevents small issues from becoming large ones.
During this process, it is important to keep senior management abreast of the activity. To that end, the project manager, with the product manager's input, published a weekly update of the activity, along with details of any areas of concern.
Once the product is ready for launch, the activity level between the product and project managers increases again. At this point the project moves into the Close Phase. Cross-functional meetings with other departments are more frequent, and all documentation is completed. A release kickoff meeting is held with Relationship Managers, Sales, Conversions, and Customer Support to internally launch the project.
Within weeks of the external launch, a lessons-learned meeting is held to review Release One and incorporate into Release Two. Lessons learned included adding more time for testing and more detailed requirements.
Release Two represented a challenge to BNY Clearing because the launch date was not flexible. BNY Clearing wanted to launch online tax statements, so the application had to be ready at the end of January. Knowing that this activity was in Release Two, however, gave the team an edge. During Release One, when online statements and trade confirmations were developed, the development team designed the code to be reusable when it came time to design the tax statements. This saved critical time and allowed the project to come in on time.
Working Together—Project Management and Product Management
The product and project managers bring different skill sets and perspectives to bear on product releases. The project manager relies on product management to ensure that the right projects are being worked on. In a product with multiple releases the project manager depends on the product manager to correctly prioritize the releases as well.
The product manager benefits from project management in a similar fashion. The project manager ensures that the project risks are mitigated as best as possible, and that the resources are allocated in the right mix across multiple release projects. At BNY Clearing, releases are treated as separate and distinct from a project planning perspective, even if they are being worked on concurrently and by the same resources. This allows for more effective resource planning if risks arise, scope increases, or priorities change. Treating releases as separate also ensures better reporting on the ramifications of changes due to risk, scope, or priorities.
Product management is typically a functional management department. In some cases, functional managers need training on the benefits project management can bring. The project manager should key in on the problems product management perceives in the organization, such as scope change, missed deadlines, poor product quality, and responsibility without direct authority. Sound project management concepts alleviate many of these issues. The project manager should highlight the benefits the product manager will derive from sharing the product plan with the project manager. Additional benefits come when the product manager is willing to use the project plan to map when releases will be available. “I have found that in the absence of effective project management, Marketing will be severely impaired from successfully launching quality projects” (Veltri 2000). When projects are managed effectively, product management sees steady progress, attainable release dates, improved product quality, and more efficient use of project resources. They gain more confidence in the communicated release dates and a better understanding of what is expected in each release.
Resource Management
Multiple release project management for web development can create some unique challenges for resource management. The authors have found it beneficial to keep some of the same developers working on the product through multiple releases. The reasons are plain. Even with meticulous documentation a developer knows his or her own work best. Relationships develop professionally, mature with time, and add an efficient dynamic to a project that proves beneficial to an organization. However, a developer must be kept busy. If his or her release project is complete, organizational demands assign that developer to additional projects if they become available. As noted, when the next release project progresses to the place where those development resources are needed, they may be assigned to different projects and unavailable for the next release project. A forward-thinking project manager should plan the developer resource carefully. Their time should be scheduled so that, at the completion of one release, they are already up to speed on the next and ready to execute successive or simultaneous release projects. The development resources of properly managed multiple releases can be kept on a product from release to release.
Summary
The Internet has changed how companies interact with suppliers, other businesses, and retail customers. By improving communications between these entities, the Internet has removed slack in organizations and became a primary factor in the increase in productivity in the 1990s. Both the increase in productivity and the ubiquity of the Internet have decreased life-cycle times in product releases. As customers and businesses have come to understand what types of information and processes are available on the Internet, their perceived needs for more expeditiously delivered information increases.
Into this environment steps the project manager. The environment may be different but the issues remain constant: uncertain requirements, changing scope, shifting priorities, and limited resources. To be effective, project managers should continually fine-tune their methodologies in ways that serve the changing needs of the marketplace.
With the rapid pace of technology and shifting scope and priorities, multiple release project management for web development is one of the challenges, and one of the solutions, the project manager faces today. The importance of the project manager working with the product manager cannot be understated, especially in an environment where neither has direct authority over the project team. By collaborating from the earliest stages of initiation through the launch and subsequent releases, the project and product manager can effectively address all of their needs. The product manager can launch products and plan for future releases over a reasonable time frame, and the project manager can focus on individual projects, while constantly monitoring and working on future releases. This need to view the forest and the trees, the holistic and the singular, is what multiple release project management is designed for.