MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF INFORMATICS
Life Project
MASTER’S THESIS
Bc. et Bc. Michael Mládek
Brno, 2013
Declaration
I declare that this Master’s thesis is my original work and that I have written it independently. All sources and literature that I have used during elaboration of the thesis are correctly cited with complete reference to the corresponding sources.
Supervisor: doc. RNDr. Tomáš Pitner, Ph.D.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor for his sponsorship and support.
Abstract
Humans in developed and emerging parts of our world are facing more and more complex environment of opportunities and responsibilities, challenging their strengths and weaknesses, traits and habits, many of them dealing with an extensive portfolio of smaller or larger personal projects. High school students, and even more extensively university students and knowledge workers, as well as people having various hobbies and interests are often dealing with many projects, tasks and demands, and – as one of the self-development coaches put it – facing a culture of More-Bigger-Faster (Schwartz, 2010).
This thesis provides insight into a spectrum of project management tools and combines them with disciplines relating to self-management. Presented tools and techniques are applicable for an individual facing a complex of challenges when managing his projects. A modern approach to project planning using mind maps and a design of an application Life Project are be proposed. The application shall provide its users with chosen tools and techniques for planning, attention focusing, tracking and monitoring their activities, as well as possibility to reflect on their performance.
Keywords education, knowledge work, life project, personal project, personal project management, project management, performance, self-development, self- management, time management, time tracking
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ...... 8
1.1 Objectives ...... 8
1.2 Chapter Overview ...... 9
2 Personal Project Management ...... 10
2.1 Projects, Programs and Portfolios ...... 10
2.1.1 The Personal Project ...... 10
2.1.2 The Personal Program ...... 11
2.1.3 The Personal Portfolio ...... 12
2.1.4 Selecting Projects ...... 14
2.1.5 The Stakeholders ...... 16
2.1.6 Managing Resources ...... 17
2.2 Planning Projects ...... 17
2.2.1 Project Charter ...... 17
2.2.2 Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) ...... 18
2.2.3 Scheduling ...... 18
2.2.4 Reducing Risks ...... 24
2.2.5 Whole-Brain Project Planning ...... 25
2.3 Executing Projects ...... 30
2.4 Monitoring and Controlling Projects ...... 31
2.5 Closing Projects ...... 38
2.6 Self-management and Personal Projects ...... 38
2.7 New Approach to (Personal) Project Management ...... 39
3 The Life Project Design ...... 45
3.1 Project Management Elements ...... 45
3.1.1 Basic Shapes ...... 49
3.1.2 Actions, Events & Sequences ...... 49
3.1.3 Artifacts ...... 50
3.1.4 Surrounding of Nodes ...... 55
3.1.5 Project Documents ...... 57
3.2 Tools in the Life Project ...... 58
3.2.1 Project Mind Map ...... 58
3.2.2 Activity Log ...... 60
3.2.3 Focus Window ...... 61
3.2.4 Timeline ...... 62
3.2.5 Counter ...... 63
3.2.6 Decision Booster ...... 63
3.2.7 Other Managerial Tools ...... 64
3.3 Future Developments ...... 64
4 Conclusion ...... 66
5 Table of Figures ...... 67
6 Bibliography ...... 69
7 Used Software ...... 73
Annexes ...... 8
1 Introduction Life Project
1 Introduction
Approaches to self-improvement by setting up goals and acting towards achieving them have been developed and in recent years popularized by many authors of leadership and self-management literature, teaching their followers how to manage their lives i.e. set up personal goals and act towards achieving them. Successfully manage one’s life in a complex environment of today’s world, where people are choosing from tremendous amounts of opportunities, as well as facing high demands and various pressures from other actors and cultural factors in society, is not an easy task. Many hypotheses in the field of self-management are being practically tested by thousands at a time, we know a lot about self-development, goals setting, planning, coaching, attention focusing, decision making, stress- management, and so on. Still, the individuals in developed world seem to struggle with a control of their performance.
While advances in information and communication technology enter nearly every aspect of human lives, new possibilities to improve or develop new tools to help individuals manage their tasks in complex environment, as well as to manage long- term projects, are being uncovered.
1.1 Objectives
One of the ways is to build an integrated system supporting its users to focus their effort towards their educational, career and personal goals. Hence the goal of this thesis is to propose a design of an integrated application – the Life Project – incorporating current knowledge and the best practices related to self-management.
This goal is divided into the following objectives:
1. To analyze and select appropriate tools and techniques from project management. 2. To summarize information from disciplines related to self-management. 3. To propose a design of an interactive system incorporating selected tools and techniques.
8
1 Introduction Life Project
1.2 Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter contains goals and structure of the work.
Chapter 2: Personal Project Management The second chapter is devoted to project management concepts, tools and techniques applicable for personal projects of individuals. Areas of self- management are briefly introduced. I present my view of a new approach to project management using mind maps, and demonstrate this approach on several case studies.
Chapter 3: The Life Project Design In the third chapter, a Life Project story is presented. It is rather a “story” outline of the application that a full featured design of an application ready for coding. Proposal on future direction of the Life Project development is presented in the end of this chapter.
Chapter 4: Conclusion In the last chapter I summarize achieved results.
9
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
2 Personal Project Management
Welcome to the area of project management. In the following paragraphs I will focus on good and best practices of project management and in parallel select those tools and techniques relevant for planning, execution, tracking, monitoring and controlling, as well as closing small individual projects. Standard project management will be redefined from a self-management point of view.
2.1 Projects, Programs and Portfolios
2.1.1 The Personal Project
Let’s start with definition of a project. The following table lists definitions by various organizations.
Source Definition
PMI, 2008 A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique (PM-BOK) product, service, or result.
ISO10006 Project is unique process consisting of a set of coordinated and controlled activities with start and finish dates, undertaken to achieve an objective conforming to specific requirements including constraints of time, cost and resources.
Pitaš, 2012 Project is a unique process restricted as to time, costs and (SPŘ/IPMA) resources and implemented in order to produce pre/defined outputs (meeting project objectives) in a required quality and in consistence with valid standards and approved requirements.
OGC, 2009 A Project is a temporary organization that is created for the (PRINCE 2) purpose of delivering one or more business products according to an agreed Business Case
Table 1: Comparison of project definitions
PMBOK adds to the project definition, that “The temporary nature of projects indicates a definite beginning and end. The end is reached when the project’s
10
2 Personal Project Management Life Project objectives have been achieved or when the project is terminated because its objectives will not or cannot be met, or when the need for the project no longer exists.”
Heroldová, 2011, referencing J. P. Sartre’s Existentialism is Humanism and Being and Nothingness, provides interesting description of a project in a life of an individual, stating that a life project is a means by which a person becomes who he decided to be.
Personal project is a unique process of self-regulated behavior to fulfill a need for a change. Personal project management is, therefore, a set of self-management tools and techniques to support the desired behavior.
Overall project’s objective is given by so called triple constraint expressed in terms of result (deliverables 1 and quality), time and costs (resources). One or two of these variables are usually fixed. In real life, projects do not proceed as planned. Consequently, if the result is fixed, manager shall either renegotiate time boundaries, or add more resources, whichever is more suitable; if the time and costs are fixed, the project’s result must be changed – either in terms of deliverables.
In small personal projects, if cooperation is not suitable or not possible at all, such as self-developmental, educational or individual research projects, the time and resources are usually strongly correlated variables. When running short of time, more resources can hardly be added and the specification must be changed.
2.1.2 The Personal Program
Let’s briefly go through definitions of programs and program management.
According to PMI, 2013, “[program is a] …group of related projects, subprograms, and program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually.”
NCB 3.2-web: “Group of projects and organizational changes connected at the level of content and jointly managed which were launched in order to attain a programme goal. Programmes may involve other activities which are not part of
1 Deliverables will be referred to as and targets in the chapter on desing, where targets are special types of events. It should not harm project management terminology, as finishing a deliverable is can be seen as zero-duration event. 11
2 Personal Project Management Life Project individual projects making up the programme. Programme benefits are usually to be expected after the whole programme has been completed.” 2
According to Mantel, 2011, program is a large integrated set of projects. Programs can also contain subprograms.
Larson-Gray, 2011, define program management as a “process of managing a group of ongoing, interdependent, related projects in a coordinated way to achieve strategic objectives.”
For the purposes of the Life Project application, the concept of personal program as a set of integrated projects is sufficient as programs will be used for grouping related projects to provide overview of what is being done in pursue of a larger achievement. For instance, study course can be a managed as a personal project, and faculty study program as a personal program. Then an overview of projects executed in given program will allow their owner or his coach manage the projects in terms of initiation, monitoring, controlling and ending, providing them a broader picture of what is being done.
2.1.3 The Personal Portfolio
According to PMI, 2013, “a portfolio refers to a collection of projects, programs, subportfolios, and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.” Such a fine-grained concept of portfolio is not very suitable for personal project management. Analogously to the hierarchy of programs, the hierarchy of portfolios is redundant.
Personal portfolio , in broader sense, is comprised of past, actual and intended personal programs and personal projects managed to achieve the person’s strategic objectives. It provides overview of everything that is important for a person to manage and track his personal projects using self-management tools and techniques. Purpose of the personal portfolio for the individual is to direct his activities to achieve his personal satisfaction pursuing his personal goals.
For example, a young student of computer science would like to become a top manager in some IT company, he would like to remain in good health conditions and he would like to start building a database of contacts for his future career. He
2 Programme (GB) = program (US). 12
2 Personal Project Management Life Project needs to successfully finish his studies, taking also some courses of management. He would like to stay physically fit , but he often skips exercising for another kind of fun. Referring to physical health program in his portfolio, containing projects like swim 1 hour in a row or run marathon in 2015, while tracking his progress, could help him achieve this goal. To build the database of contacts, he knows that he needs to socialize. This endeavor mi ght include taking part in or even organizing study groups, meetings or other events ; or to be an active social networker.
Larson –Gray, 2011 define portfolio management as a “ centralized management of projects to ensure that the allocation of resources t o projects is directed toward projects that contribute the greatest value to organization goals.” (Larson -Gray)
One’s personal programs and projects need not be necessarily interdependent, however they should contribute to the person’s satisfaction in life . Personal portfolio management is , therefore, a continuous direction of personal endeavor in one’s life towards his or her overall satisfaction by selecting, executing and evaluating personal projects and programs.
Relation between personal projects, prog rams and portfolio, simplified for the purposes of the Life Project application:
Figure 1: Relation of projects, programs and portfolios for the purpose of personal project management
Each user has one portfolio. His projects and programs are always part of this portfolio (ref_1, ref_2) . Programs serve for grouping projects only (ref_3). Subportfolios and subprograms are redundant as higher level of complexity is not expected in personal project managem ent.
13
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
2.1.4 Selecting Projects
There is potentially infinite number of projects we can work on, but resources are limited. Speaking about small personal resources, they are extremely scarce, since we walk on a critical path . Doing the right things, i.e. selecting the right projects is therefore quite important.
There are a number of methods and approaches to choose a project. Let’s take a closer look at them.
Non-numeric Selection Methods
Non-numeric selection methods are used when numeric selection methods are not suitable or necessary. First three methods are introduced in Mantel, 2011.
1. The Sacred Cow is based on a bright idea of an expert, being strongly convinced about importance of a certain project or program. 2. Operating or Competitive Necessity , rather than a selection method, is a situation in which certain project must be executed. For example a student must select mandatory courses; or Head Accountant of some local Asian company must take lectures of international accounting when the company is acquired by a company quoted on Frankfurt Stock Exchange. 3. Comparative Benefits or Q-sort Method is a method of categorizing and ordering projects according to their importance. In the first step, the projects are piled into three subsets, for instance “good”, “fair” and “poor”. These subsets can be further subdivided as necessary. 4. Simple ordered list . The projects are ordered in a list by their owner, who naturally selects the most important ones. 5. Projects and Someday/maybe list . Allen, 2001 proposes putting projects according to perception of urgency into one of the two categories: Project list for the projects that a person wants to act on, and Someday/maybe list if no action is needed at the time.
Numeric Selection Methods
Numeric selection methods in standard project management are usually – but not always – associated with financial evaluation. Among financial evaluation methods we can choose from a number of static or dynamic methods calculating return on
14
2 Personal Project Management Life Project investments, such as ROI, payback methods, IRR, NPV, and so on. These methods can be very well combined with non-numeric methods in business life, unlike small personal projects. Mantel, 2011 proposes the first two of the following scoring methods, which can be used for comparable projects, as well as
6. Unweighted 0 – 1 Factor Method is the simplest one. It contains a list of propositions, which shall be marked true or false (or applies/does not apply) for each project. The number of positive answers is counted and the projects can be compared easily. 7. Weighted Scoring Method is an extension to the unweighted model. Owner of a set of projects chooses common criteria applicable to each one of them and assigns a weight (importance) to each criterion. Let be an i-th project ∈ from a set of projects and be a weight of a j-th criterion. ∈ 0, 1 , ∑ 1 Let the owner assign a score to each criterion of each project ( is a score of the j-th criterion of the i-th project). Then the final score of the project i is calculated as
8. Unweighted Scoring Method is the simplification of the weighted scoring method, where all criteria have the same weight.
15
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Optional_course_i 0 1 Score 0 1 2 3 weight Personally interesting x 0,20 Important to further study x 0,30 Contributes to future career x 0,40 Credits x 0,10 TOTAL 1,00
Unweighted 0 – 1 Factor Method Si = 0 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 (out of 4) Weighted Scoring Method Si = 1 x 0,2 + 2 x 0,3 + 2 x 0,4 + 3 x 0,1 = 1,9 (out of 3) Unweighted Scoring Method Si = 1 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 8 (out of 12)
Figure 2: Comparison of scoring methods
Optional_course_i from the picture above will be preferred before projects of lower score, and make a way to projects with higher score.
2.1.5 The Stakeholders
Stakeholders , or Interested Parties , “are people or groups, who are interested in the performance and/or success of the project, or who are constrained by the project” (Pitaš, 2012). A stakeholder may directly or indirectly affect, be affected by, or perceive itself being affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project (Mantel, 2011). To support decision making, it sometimes makes sense for an individual to engage stakeholders that will not be managed, or even those that can never be reached at all. For the purpose of the Life Project application, stakeholders are people or groups, both, real or virtual ones, who may directly or indirectly influence or be influenced by a decision, activity, or outcome of the project .
Various sources (e.g. Pitaš, 2012, PMI, 2008) stress the importance of stakeholder identification, analysis and management. There are various types of analyses for categorizing stakeholders, such as power/interest grid, power/influence grid, influence/impact grid, salience model (three-set Venn diagram based on power, urgency and legitimacy), and they can classified as internal/external or supporters/neutrals/resistors (PMI, 2008). Generally, with regard to given project, 16
2 Personal Project Management Life Project each stakeholder may have certain role and stakeholder management strategy can be set up.
It is reasonable to maintain a database of all stakeholders that have been dealt with, as well as any potential stakeholders in the future. Contact list or address book can be the right tools.
2.1.6 Managing Resources
Resource management in project management literature is usually described within a broader context. For personal projects, it makes sense to take into account personal endeavor of the project owner. For the purpose of this thesis, most of the related processes can be omitted, such as resources acquisition, resources development, team management, negotiation and so on.
Time management including estimating time available will be briefly discussed in a chapter on monitoring and controlling.
2.2 Planning Projects
2.2.1 Project Charter
High-level description, objectives and other aspects of a project shall be assessed in a project charter (Pitaš, 2012, PMI, 2008), or a project plan (Mantel, 2011).
Before a project is initiated, it is practical to know what change we want to achieve, why we want to do it, how we will manage it, who we will deal with and what are the major risks. Simplified project charter for personal projects should contain:
- Name of the project - High-level description of the project - High-level description of desired result (deliverables, objectives) - High-level description of milestones
Additionally, the project charter may contain:
- Available resources (how much time will be allocated to the project) - Preliminary list of stakeholders - Preliminary list of risks
17
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Although the project owner can start planning the pro ject with the project charter, the document is not intended to be static, but it is to be worked on during the project’s life -cycle.
2.2.2 Work Break down Structure (WBS)
One of the lower -level planning tools is a Work B reakdown Structure (WBS). WBS is a hierarchical structure decomposing higher-level project outputs into smaller , manageable items.
Figure 3: Work breakdown structure – tree and ordered list
PMI approach (PMI, 2013) names the lowest level items work pack ages and allows them to contain activities. Unlike PMI, the IPMA approach (Pitaš, 2012) stresses the fact that WBS should strictly describe deliverables, while some methodologies describing WBS as a breakdown of activities are wrong. Dr. Jaroslav Ráček, pr oject manager and lector at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, mentions during his lectures of Team Project Le adership, that it is a common practice to include both, product, as well as process breakdown in one hybrid WBS (Ráček, 2010).
2.2.3 Scheduling
Project schedule is a plan that serves for monitoring and controlling project activities (Mantel, 2011).
18
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
PMI, 2008 describes the following processes for project time management 3:
- Plan schedule management - Define activities - Sequence activities - Estimate activity durations - Develop schedule - Control schedule
Pitaš, 2012 in the competence element Time & project phases addresses project phases as an important part of project management. Phases in project schedule must be clearly separate from other phases; nonetheless in practice, they overlap in time. For instance as a student is working on a thesis (e.g. phase of programming), she may place and advance order on preparation of the thesis cover (phase of closing).
In project management, operations or sequence of operations “changing reality with a particular purpose” are called activities (Pitaš, 2012). Besides the term activity, there is another expression that also fits well with acting on reality to achieve a change, and it is “taking action”. Further in the thesis, I will use actions , action items or activities as synonyms.
Defining Activities
Activities are derived from previously identified deliverables identified. There is one main and very scarce resource in a personal project, the project owner, who is responsible for managing the project, as well as performing most of activities. Therefore, it makes sense to track any activity including those not directly associated with deliverables, such as planning. For personal project management, this broader meaning of activity is practical.
Name of an activity may not self-explanatory, and more extensive definition might be necessary. Other attributes can be references to succeeding or preceding activities, relationships with other actions or items in general (addressed in the chapter 2.7), deadlines or time intervals, time estimates, durations, recurrence,
3 PMBOK 5th edition introduced Plan schedule management process, which is out of scope of this thesis. 19
2 Personal Project Management Life Project reminders and stage of completion. It is also important to distinguish, as Allen, 2001 advises, to-do actions and waiting -for (delegated) actions.
Sequencing
Important part of developing standard project schedules is ordering activities according to their logical precedence. Resulting structure is a network of activities, or project network. Project schedule can be displayed in various formats such as network diagram, ordered list, bar chart , Gantt chart or network diagrams. The following figures ( Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6) have been taken from Mantel, 2011.
Activity Predecesor A ---- B ---- C a D b E b F c, d G e
Figure 4: Sequence of acti vities
Figure 5: Network diag ram – Activity -on-Node, AON
20
2 Pe rsonal Project Management Life Project
Figure 6: Network diagram – Activity -on-Arrow, AOA
Estimating Time
There are several approaches to estimating duration of activities.
Expert judgment is – from the point of view of any project management application – the simplest technique. The time estimate is given.
Parametric estimating relies on “… a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables […] to calculate an e stimate for activity parameters, such as cost, budget, and duration” (PMI, 2013) . This technique can be used on comparable tasks.
For example, a critic is working on an extensive book review . The book has 525 pages; the review should have 8 standard pages. The following table shows historical data and parametric estimates of three of the tasks from his project. The calculation s below are trivial.
History Plan Task Rate Units Amount Units Duration hrs. Quick perusal 120 pages/hour 525 pages 4,4 Reading+notes 1,75 minutes/page 525 pages 15,3 Writing 55 minutes/page 8 pages 7,3 TOTAL 27,0
Figure 7: Example of parametric estimating
21
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Three -point estimating originated with the program evaluation and review technique, referred to as PERT (PMI, 2013). This concept uses three types of estimates of activity durations:
- Most likely duration ( ); most often duration , mode - Optimistic duration ( ); almost never I can do better - Pessimistic duration ( ); almost never I can do worse
Two formulas estimating the mean, or expected duration ( ) depending on preferred distribution are commonly used :
- Binomial distribution: - Triangular distr ibution:
Figure 8: Comparison of triangular and binomial distribution
The distributions are usually positively skewed due to the empirical fact that, as Griffiths, 2008 point edly notes in his article on duration estimating in project management: “…when things go bad they go really bad! ” This skewedness affects difference between mode and mean value.
Three -point estimating can also be used for calculating probability of desired project du ration (e.g. 80 % probability the project will take no more than 30 days) . This calculation depends on probabilities of optimistic and pessimistic activity duration estimates . More information can be found online or in Mantel, 2011.
22
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Allocating Time
Allocating resources is a process of assigning scarce resources, such as people and equipment, to planned tasks. Resource calendars (people’s calendars, HR management systems, reservation systems…) are part of inputs to this process, being used in complex project environment. Nonetheless, complexity of personal project environment is from this point of view incomparably lower, and therefore extensive resource calendars would be meaningless. On the other hand, if a person deals with hundreds of tasks every week or if he or she is working on an inconsiderable number of projects simultaneously – while only one thing can be done at a time – a personal calendar is a necessity.
New approaches in project management are emerging, hand in hand with application of project management in areas of software development. Mantel, 2011 mentions so called quasi-projects : “Led by the demands of the information technology/ systems departments, project management is now being extended into areas where the project ’ s objectives are not well understood, time deadlines unknown, and/or budgets undetermined.” Larson-Gray, 2011 adds that “This project environment requires flexibility and the ability to manage changes as more information and learning take place”. Adding activity slacks, adding virtual activities or deadlines when objectives are not yet specified may not always be the right solution. Agile management , a family of techniques applied mostly in software development, such as extreme programming, RUP (rational unified process), lean development or Scrum, might provide an answer.
Scrum is an agile iterative and incremental approach to software development, utilizing advantages of very short time-bound increments, usually one month or less. The methodology prescribes daily meetings for project team members to synchronize their work (Schwaber–Sutherland, 2011). The work is divided into smaller activities which are planned for a shorter periods of time. These activities can be represented by so called Kanban cards and Kanban board.
Kanban means a signboard or billboard in Japanese. This system introduced by Toyota relies on cards marking a moving inventory in production (Creative Safety Supply, 2010). This approach is used for managing workflow in agile project management, including Scrum. Kniberg, 2009 refers to it as Scrum-ban. There is a number of “boxes” through which the workflow passes, such as to-do , ongoing , done . 23
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Since flexibility is important in agile managem ent, various charts can be designed according to needs . Examples can be seen on the following figures:
Figure 9: Kanban/Scrum -ban board example 1
Figure 10 : Kanban/Scrum -ban board example 2
2.2.4 Reducing Risks
Risk is a “Precarious event or condition which – if it occurs – impacts the attainment of the project objective negatively” (Pitaš, 2012). In personal project management such events or conditions may impact achieving results or schedule. One’s budget might also be subject to risk ; however, as far as project costs are not a common subject to control in the area of personal projects, reducing related risks is out of the scope of this thesis. Common steps in the process of risk management inv olve risk identification, risk assessment, risk response development and risk response control (Larson -Gray, 2011).
There are types of projects, including many personal projects, for which complicated risk analysis does not make sense. Risk management can be simplified to a simple
24
2 Personal Project Management Life Project risk response plan as shown in the following table. If necessary, identified risks can be stored in a risk register for further reference.
Project: The Life Project
Name Description Strategy computer failure back-up all materials daily application falure file with my thesis cracks up keep increments in separate files scope creep over-kill features skip and move on ......
Figure 11: Simple risk response plan
Other risk reduction techniques are inherent in project management itself, for instance the previously mentioned decomposition of results, parametric or three- point time estimating, CPM and so on.
2.2.5 Whole-Brain Project Planning
In an additional discussion about project structures, Mantel, 2011 mentions a whole- brain approach to project planning , which is mind mapping.
Mind map is a graph containing nodes and edges connecting those nodes. Root node is usually a central idea, around which other ideas emerge. “Millions of people are using mind maps for brainstorming, note taking, document drafting, project planning and other tasks that require hierarchical structuring of information,” say Beel–Langer, 2011 in one of the first papers on mind mapping, based on a study of nearly 20 thousand mind maps. Nearly 47.53 % of the sample contained more than 36 nodes, with the largest mind map of 52 182 nodes and several more with more than 10 000 nodes. Over 16,1 % of mind maps contained 101+ nodes.
Toi–Perry, 2013 addressed mind mapping in project management in SME’s, asking four research issues:
1. How can mind maps help in managing complexity in SME projects? 2. How can mind maps increase creativity in SME project management processes? 3. How can mind maps impact on SME project communications?
25
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
4. How can mind maps impact on SME project management processes?
I have summarized outcomes of their research in the following table:
Research issue Impact Managing complexity Positive Increase in creativity Positive Impact on communications Limited Impact on project management processes Planning Positive Monitoring and controlling Positive Executing Positive Closing None (but potentially positive)
Figure 12: Impact of mind mapping on project management according to Toi-Perry, 2013
My personal experience with using mind mapping in project management was very similar to the research study. I used an open source mind mapping software – FreeMind – in 2011 and 2012 to organize two events for employees of the company TESCAN, a.s. Case studies of my experience of using mind mapping for project management follow. 4
Case Study 1
The first project in 2011 was a 50+ people informal employees’ weekend event on a cottage in mountains in September. As a leader of a 4-member core team and a number of collaborators, I used mind mapping through all phases of project management, except for closing and addressed all important topics including team, deliverables, general schedule, contacts, procurement and bookings, financial plan or risk-response plan.
4 Both mind maps were edited to the extent that phone numbers, full names and pricing information were removed. Both files are attached. 26
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 13 : Case study 1 project mind map , collapsed
Expanded mind map of the same project is shown on the following figure.
Figure 14 : Case study 1 project mind map, expanded
The mind map contained 242 nodes, 4 776 characters including spaces. Nodes were marked by various icons indicating states of items or indicating additional information. Two pictures (external files) were included, too.
27
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Case Study 2
In winter 2012, I co -organized and a dministered a company’s Christmas party for up to 180 people . The team consisted of 2 core members and 3 collaborating colleagues.
Figure 15 : Case study 2 project mind map, semi -collapsed
Perceived complexity of this project was comparably lower, as shows the following figure.
Figure 16 : Case study 2 project mind map expanded
28
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
The mind map contained 128 nodes, 3 486 characters including spaces, indicative icons and no pictures. The mind map was used to a similar extent as in the previous case. This mind map together with budget were reused a similar project in 2013.
Conclusions from the Case Studies
The following table shows a comparison from both the case studies:
Characteristic Case study 1 Case study 2 Team members core 4 2 Perceived relative complexity Higher Lower No of nodes / characters 242 / 4776 128 / 3486
Figure 17: Characteristics of the case studies
Now, let’s compare outcome of mind mapping usage in the case studies with research results of Toi–Perry, 2013:
Project management issue Case study 1 Case Study 2 Managing complexity Positive Positive Increase in creativity Positive Positive Impact on communications Very limited No impact Impact on project management processes Planning Positive Positive Monitoring and controlling Positive Positive Executing Positive Positive Closing None Limited
Figure 18: Comparison of results with findings of Toi-Perry, 2013
Despite the overall positive impact on project planning, current mind mapping software quite limited for its universality, lacking important features for project management.
29
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Another observation was that the management in both cases had an “ad-hoc” nature similar to Getting things done (GTD) , an approach brought by Allen, 2011, i.e. the project scope was dynamically changing, as well as associated activities.
Next steps in a road map of assimilating features of mind mapping to project management are a design of an integrated tool on one hand, and shifting approach to project management on the other. This topic will be addressed in the following chapters.5
2.3 Executing Projects
In a discourse on project execution, for purposes of personal project management analysis, it is interesting to look at project work from different perspective from standard project management.
Allen, 2001 divides activity performed throughout the day into three categories: doing planned work, doing work as it shows up and defining the work to be done. He also emphasizes so called collection habit , which is nothing less than making notes of any ideas on our minds to keep our mind clear and thus productive. It is an approach targeting personal productivity, creativity and dealing with multitasking.
Tracking is an important part of project execution. “Work performance data are the raw observations and measurements identified during activities being performed to carry out the project work. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of detail from which information is derived by other processes. Data is gathered through work execution and passed to the controlling processes of each process area for further analysis” (PMI, 2013). It includes work completed, KPI’s, performance measures, start/finish dates of scheduled activities, durations and so on (ibid.).
Users of project management system should be allowed to track anything that is important for them to track on a project. In an ideal case, the work performance data would be a by-product of the project execution. It is not possible in reality (at least not yet), nonetheless one of important requirements is to track at the maximum efficiency, and therefore the tracking system must be designed in a suitable way.
5 Even though this topic will be addressed with respect to personal projects, I strongly believe and sense the potential of mind mapping being used as an important tool in all phases of project management, especially (i) to support creativity in planning and (ii) to keep an overall picture when executing, monitoring and control phases. 30
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Another aspect of knowledge work that people face these days is a growing demand on knowledge workers, especially in business. Schwartz, 2010 describes this as a culture of “More, Bigger, Faster”, and further emphasizes features of today’s working environment such as blurred specification of objectives and increasing complexity of work. Nonetheless, people can really execute only one task at a time and multitasking is strongly tied with overhead time needed to switch from one task to another, causing decrease in productivity.
Tracking system, a tool for attention focusing and other project management tools related to execution of activities will be proposed in the chapter 3 on designing the system.
2.4 Monitoring and Controlling Projects
A monitoring system provides a feedback loop for the manager to take appropriate action throughout the project execution, i.e. to control the project as necessary. Work performance data are the main input for project monitoring system; anyway, it is important for the project manager to be aware of their limits.
There is a number of reporting tools that can be used to monitor project.
Kanban Board
One of the tools, the Kanban or “Scrum-ban” covers scheduling, execution as well as monitoring processes of project management, showing planned work, work in progress and work already finished. Examples of such board have been presented above (Figure 9, Figure 10).
Cumulative Flowchart
Cumulative flowchart is a basic tool of Kanban–like workflow performance management. It shows an amount of Kanban cards in each category. For instance, the sample project from Figure 10 could evolve as follows, having 17 finished, 8 in progress and 9 pending cards:
31
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 19 : Cumulative flowchart
Resources/Time Consumption
Another aspect that can be used to evaluate work is a consumption of resources. Such calculation is, however, quite tricky, as it does not tell more than the time that has already been consumed, not showing the progress that has already been achieved. Neve rtheless, r esources consumption can be compared to another measure, from which it is possi ble to estimate remaining time.
Let’s return to the example of the book critic from the subchapter 2.2.3 mentioned with regard to parametric estimating (see also Figure 7). Imagine a situation when quick perusal has been finished right on t ime and 50 pages have already been read, including taking notes . A text of the book is complicated and those 50 pages took 150 minutes, i.e. 3 minutes/page. The critic updates his plan and finds out the project may take at least two more day s.
32
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Project history Plan Task Rate Units Amount Units Duration hrs. Quick perusal finished n.a. Reading+notes 3,00 minutes/page 525 pages 26,3 Writing 60 minutes/page 8 pages 8,0 TOTAL 34,3
Figure 20: Parametric estimating and consumption of resources
Rate of Task Completion
It is quite common that a rate of completion of tasks is set as percentage by a project manager. The rate is 0 % before activity start and 100 % when the activity is completed. Nevertheless, what does a rate between 0 and 100 actually mean?
Although sometimes used, the completion in percentage of completion is not recommended by some authors, e.g. Rosenau, 2007 who suggests decomposing activities into smaller actions and track completion of these small actions. On the other hand, to keep the plan digest, the project manager might find it better to have smaller number of activities covering larger scope.
Checklists
One possible compromise is a checklist. Any activity can be defined as a checklist containing small actions to be taken. Completion rate can then be calculated as a number of completed steps.
The above approach may not be suitable in all cases. Let’s imagine a student reading a book on project management. To keep an oversight of topics he finished reading, as well as those before him, he decides to divide a book into chapters. Also, he wants to track its completion while being able to estimate duration.
33
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 21 : Map of chapters from Larson -Gray, 2011
Population characteristics follow on Figure 22 . Apparently, tracking of chapters completed does not tell much abou t completion rate of the whole book.
Figure 22 : Population characteristics of chapters in Larson -Gray, 2011
34
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Weighted Checklists
Solution to this problem is a weighted checklist, where weights are units of work to be performed. I have used this method widely during my university studies to check my progress and calculate duration by calculating average time per page from a small sample of pages.
Variance Analysis
Statistical methods can be used to evaluate plan to reality (estimates to actual values). The following statistics are commonly used (Mantel, 2011):
0 ⇒
Standard deviation is used to measure variability in observations
1
0 ⇒
If absolute difference < 0 or standard deviation < 0, then the actual value is smaller than the prediction.
Analysis of Time Utilization
I have been using this technique during my studies to obtain an overview of time utilization during the day, while tracking the time of performance. The time can be tracked on various bases, as shown on the following figure.
35
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 23 : Tracking of time utilization
Blue columns mean performance, red line stands for cumulative effort. 6
Self -Evaluations and External Evaluation s
The l ast from the discussed family of monitoring/controlling techniques are self - evaluations and external evaluations 7. Thes e techniques can have a form of verbal evaluation, comparisons, scaling , and so on . It may be useful for the project manager to keep reflections as at reaching a significant event.
Self -evaluation is a way how a person can reflect on his role and performance in a given project from his point of view. External evaluation is a feedback obt ained from people in the project’s environment. 360° feedback is a combination of self -evaluation
6 I have been using such charts to analyze my time utilization on every study project since January 2013 to analyze my performance during the day. 7 I was introduced these techniques by Renate Motschnig from University of Vienna when attending C ommunication and Soft Skills course at Masaryk University and used them when teaching this course later on. 36
2 Personal Project Management Life Project and external evaluation; this method has been quite popular in HR management (Fleenor–Prince, 1997). The following figures are examples of evaluation sheets 8:
Indicator \ Score Σ 3 2 1 0 Quantity 2 x Quality 3 x Reliability 2 x Time effectiveness 2 x Creativity 1 x TOTAL SCORE 10
Verbal evaluation Strengths - -
Opportunities for improvement - -
Figure 24: Sample reflection sheet for 360-degree feedback
Indicator \ Score Σ Quantity 12 Quality 15 Reliability 12 Time effectiveness 12 Creativity 11 TOTAL SCORE 62 (83%)
Self-evaluation External evaluation Strengths ------
Opportunities for improvement ------
Figure 25: Sample consolidated 360-degree report
8 Loosely inspired by Hakala, 2008 and Trout, 2002 37
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
2.5 Closing Projects
According to Pitaš, 2012, the close-out process should be executed at the end of project, program, as well as the end of each phase. In personal project management, the close-out can be performed at the end of personal program, personal project and reaching of certain target. Self-evaluation, external evaluation or 360-degree feedback, the techniques discussed in the previous subchapter, can be used for closing.
2.6 Self-management and Personal Projects
Let’s briefly overview several popular approaches to self-management and how it is linked to personal projects.
Self-management is a wide area of knowledge in the intersection of management and psychology. Oxford Dictionaries defines self-management as a “management of or by oneself; the taking of responsibility for one’s own behaviour and well-being”. This definition is about why we should manage ourselves, and it is with alignment with traditional popular self-management literature, such as bestsellers Covey, 2006, Schwartz, 2010 or an academic textbook Systém managementu 9. These sources (among many other) persuade of their followers to change their behavior in a certain way, explanation of why they need to change it and reinforcement to do so.
Thinking of who I am, where I am, what I want to achieve and how I want to achieve it can be utilized when planning at portfolio or program level.
Closer to the tools that people can use when managing themselves is referred at Wikipedia: “In business, education, and psychology, self-management refers to methods, skills, and strategies by which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the achievement of objectives, and includes goal setting, decision making, focusing, planning, scheduling, time management, task tracking, self- evaluation, self-intervention, self-development, etc.” Allen, 2001 describes his rather practical approach as how to get things done, emphasizing a collection habit incumbent on collecting and processing everything that is on our mind, the stuff . Should the stuff require any action, it is done immediately, organized (into a project
9 English translation: system of management (rem.) 38
2 Personal Project Management Life Project plan , or calendar or checklist). GTD workflow is on the following flowchart 10 (Allen, 2001).
Figure 26 : GTD approach to dealing with “stuff”, colored
Although the GTD mentions several models of higher level planning, it is more concerned about lower -level planning , organizing and doing planned work.
When we link Allen’s approach to personal project management, we can observe that the diagram is about identifying (green -colored rectangles), organizing (blue - colored rectangles) and doing (gray -colored rectangles).
2.7 New Approach to (Personal) Project Management
I have identified the following lifecycle of personal projects . Description of the phases will be demonstrated on a Case Study 3 – planning a meeting of a board of directors in a subsidiary in the U.S.
10 Original colors on the flow chart are black and white. Colors have been added to explain links with project management. 39
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 27 : Personal project lifecycle
In personal life, similarly to the business life, projects and programs are initiated (started ) by a decision to ful fill a need for certain change. Output from this phase is a project charter.
Identification phase relates to brainstorming. The first step is to elaborate a very simple project charter. The next step is to collect all items that are on one’s mind into a single mind map . The items in thi s case mean any , though not yet defined, ideas important for the project. During this collection process, nature of these items is identified . Among others, it is important to identify what needs to be achieved (targets , i.e. items originating from objectives a deliverables ) and action items in a broader sense ( actions , events) for project organization. Other items that can be 40
2 Personal Project Management Life Project identified may voluntarily include team members, stakeholders, risks, plans, notes or other artifacts. This distinction from anything else will allow focusing attention on important aspects of the project.
The organizing phase is about connecting activities, events and targets into sequences and specification of activities and events in time (time estimates, dates, deadlines). These sequences add another perspective to previously created mind map and can be used for further processing, such as calendaring, calculating their critical paths or handling on an agile whiteboard.
During the doing & tracking phase , activities are being processed the progress is tracked. While keeping the big picture view, we can focus our attention on the most important activity to be done at a time. During this phase, raw work progress data are collected. Having the right support for attention focusing (such as the concept of Focus Window introduced in this thesis), it is possible to easily track the time spent focusing on given item. Progress can be tracked by changing progress state, either in % complete marking or by ticking finished activities.
Since not all the data can be automatically recorded, in some cases it might be useful to keep a chronologic record of other types of data like project reflections, notes, pictures and so on.
In the Monitoring & Controlling phase tools and processes described in the subchapter 2.4 are used. In this phase, the progress is tracked and individual behavior is corrected towards meeting desired result. Individual’s workflow is coordinated among all projects that are being executed at a time.
As shown on the Figure 27, phases, or rather processes of identification, organization, doing & tracking and monitoring & controlling can be executed at any time, reflecting an ad-hoc nature of personal projects, similar to agile projects.
The project can be closed in two cases – it is either closed for the results being achieved, or terminated if it is not appropriate anymore. Closing phase should include a final report , containing summary of information that were worth tracking (time spent, extent of achieving desired results, reflections and scores, etc.). The project with its final report is archived for future reference. This closing process applies to closing programs to the same extent.
41
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Case Study 3
In this case study, the personal project lifecycle is demonstrated on an example of a person organizing a business trip to the USA .
Figure 28 shows identification phase of a project plan represented by a mind map. The organizer identifies three deliverables and nine actions including two checklists.
Figure 28 : Identification phase (emerging mind map)
42
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 29 : Organizing phase (sequencing actions)
On the previous figure, a trip date is apparently missing. Now, the following steps could be taken :
1. Add a new action item “set up meeting date ” (identifying ) 2. Create a sequence “set up meeting date ” --> “ask for tickets ” (organizing )
Then he could find out other issues regarding this trip (e.g. it would be good to identify stakeholders and manage their needs; by the way, when does the employment agreement with the subsidiary ’s General Manager expire ?) and adjust the mind map accordingly.
While executing the planned steps, the user tracks his time spent on the project and marks achieved steps as finished ( doing & tracking ), while at eve ry finished step he checks the overall progress ( monitoring & controlling ).
43
2 Personal Project Management Life Project
Figure 30: Doing & tracking and monitoring phases : mind map with and without sequences
At the end of the project, final report contain ing meeting minutes , trip minutes and reflection is created and all relevant materials are archived for future reference (closing ).
Figure 31 : Close -out phase of the Board meeting organization project
44
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
3 The Life Project Design
Toi–Perry, 2013 indicated, besides others, two important things:
1. There is “no one way that project management was understood or adopted,” 11 2. There is “lack of creativity in project management…[but] creativity is hailed as an important skill in many aspects of business operations”
This experimental application shall provide new approach to project planning and execution, supporting its users to remain in context of what they are doing at any given moment, hand in hand with supporting them to focus at one thing at a time. The application shall provide feedback for its users to be able to reflect on their work and decide on appropriate corrections in their behavior.
And who should the users of the Life Project? It aims at knowledge workers, especially those familiar with mind mapping, who feel the need to bring more creativity to project planning and execution. Among those, young students, as well as their teachers may use this tool. It may also serve managers dealing with higher number of small projects. It can very well serve as self-developmental tool.
The Life Project application design in the first instance will focus on visual elements that – I believe – will be a means of shifting project management to a different level. It will allow its users keep a “big picture” view of a project, support workflow and hopefully enhance their creativity in the Life Project users.
3.1 Project Management Elements
As indicated in the previous chapter, the project will be planned and organized using a mind map as a core too. Each element is an object . Object , whose main feature is the possibility to reference or be referenced by any other object. Objects need not be a part of the mind map.
11 Quotation of THOMAS, Janice–MULLALY, Mark, Researching the value of project management. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute Inc, 2008. 45
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 32 : Connecting objects
The very basic structure of a mind map is a tree. In yearly stage of its development it will consist of basic elements, which are nodes and edges , both of them being Objects.
Figure 33: Object : Node, Edge 12
Node is a basi c type of element. Children of this node will be part of the mind map. Sub -tree of any node (children, grandchildren, and so forth) can be displayed or hidden.
Figure 34 : Hierarchy of Nodes
There are several types of nodes, inheriting all properties of the Node:
12 Node and Edge will not the only objects in Life Project 46
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 35 : Special types of Nodes
Root node , which represents a basic idea, around which the mind map is created. Constraint: The root node can have no predecessors.
Regular node is an element of a mind map containing a user’s idea. Constraint: Each Regular node contains a reference to its predecessor. In the mind map, the node is connected to its predecessor by a non -oriented edge. Its children are Action item and Event.
Sequence item is a kind of Regular node that can be connected into a sequence.
Action item is a kind of Sequence item, meaning an activity to be executed by the user or someone else (external). It possesses special attributes for calendaring and tracking purposes, such as dates, deadlines, duration, state of progress, responsibility , and so on. Action items can be flagged as external , which has a meaning of being external to the user of Lif e Project.
Event is a kind of Sequence item, represent ing an indicative state achieved during the project execution. It can be something that occurs at certain time or certain state of the 47
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
project. Significant event is called a milestone and it possesses no special properties. Other types of events are a target state of a result (o bjective, deliverable) and gate (for the purpose of allowing the project to continue ), none of them carrying any special properties as well , and therefore not being included in the diagram.
Artifact is a kind of node that has no constraints on being connected to another node. It can serve as a regular node, but it can float freely on the plane around other objects. Purposes of the artefacts are to reference particular objects, such as people, groups, plans, files, etc., and to add special functionality, such as checklists, counters, plans, analytical tools , learning objects 13 , and so on.
Each Node , except the R oot node, is inherently connected to its predecessor by a non -oriented edge. These edges are generated from attributes of Nodes, instead of being stored separately in a database. This hierarchy , however, is not sufficient for project management, and therefore there will be additional edges.
Edge visibly connects two Nodes one another . It has a beginning and an end, which may be represented by an arrow. Edges represent a genera l connection between two Nodes and they are represented as non -oriented line, oriented arrow or double arrow.
Figure 36 : Edge: connecting Node s one another
Items (or Nodes) that can be organized in time, i.e. Action items or Events, can be connected by one -way oriented edge only to create a connection in a sequence.
Sequence arrow is a kind of Edge connecting Action item to another Action Constraint: Edges that connect Action items and Events for the purpose of
13 According to Watson, 2007, “a learning object can be defined as any digital media that can be reused to support learning”. 48
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
creating a sequence shall be represented by a one -way arrow. (Creating sequences of activities has been discussed in the pr evious chapter.)
3.1.1 Basic Shapes
The following picture shows basic shapes used to form project mind map.
Figure 37 : Basic elements of a mind map
3.1.2 Actions, Events & Sequences
Action items and events can be connected by arrows, creati ng sequences. Colors show states of the elements. Milestones, targets and gates are special types of events, possessing no special functionality. External (delegated) actions are visibly distinct from standard action items.
49
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 38 : Actions, events and sequence arrows
3.1.3 Artifacts
Artifacts are additional items of project mind maps enhancing explanatory power while keeping the maps simple and digest , as well as extending them of useful functionality assisting in project management.
Artifacts are usually connected to other objects in the application, such as checklists, contacts, plans, managerial aids, etc., nonetheless, they can be used as plan visual features.
It is possible to use them as stand-alone nodes, or they can be closely associated with other nodes in the mind map. This close association may affect functionality of some of the nodes . Visually, closely associated artifacts appear as badges attached to classical nodes .
I have identified the following groups of Artifacts that may be used to build a project mind map :
50
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
- Actionable artifacts - People & groups - Risks - Plans - Management tools & aids - Other
Actionable artifacts include C hecklists and Counters . These artifacts can be associated with action items and serve for project planning, as well as tracking and monitoring progress.
Figure 39 : Actionable artifacts
Checklists are intended to have two functions in the mind map:
1. Reduce quantity of separate actionable nodes (action items) 2. Measure progress of an action item if closely associated with the item
The checklists can be either weighted or unweighted. Example of a weighted checklist is a book containing chapters and pages.
51
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Larson-Gray - chapters Chapter Pages Finished 1 20 ✓ 2 42 ✓ 3 36 ✓ 4 26 ✓ 5 30 ✓ 6 54 ✓ 7 42 ✓ 8 52 ✓ 9 34 10 36 ......
Figure 40: Example of weighted checklist (“expanded” artifact)
Counters can be used in two ways 14 :
1. To track occurrence of intentionally observed variable 2. To measure progress of an action item if closely associated with the item
People & Groups group of artifacts consists of persons and groups/teams. Any person or group can be marked as a collaborator or as a stakeholder.
14 In further stages of the Life Project development, the mind map will allow inserting loop- shaped sequences. Counters in this case will be used to track number of passes through a loop. 52
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 41 : People & groups (artifacts)
Persons or groups can be closely associated with actionable items; especially they should be associated with external /delegated actions to specify responsibility .
Risks group contains only one member, yet – Identified r isk . The risks can be closely associated with another node, providing the identified risk a context. The risks shall be automatically propagated to the risk response plan.
Figure 42 : Identified risk (artifact)
Plans is another group of artifacts that serve as links to project plans. They are inherently closely associated with the mind map root. More instances of a given project plan in a project mind map do not create more instances of plans ; each such instance works as a link to the project plan. Examples of such artifacts can be fou nd on the following figure.
53
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 43 : Plans (artifacts)
Management tools & aids is very important group of artifacts, since these artifacts considerably extend functionality of project mind maps. This group includes:
- Embedded mind maps can be useful for actual brainstorming purposes. Instead of creating separate mind map, an embedded mind map can be created within the existing one , but do not need to be directly i ncluded in the project mind map. If closely associated to a node, they do not extend functionality the node. - Analyses in project mind maps can be used to notify a user that some analysis will be necessary at some point in the future, to perform the analysis if desired functionality is present in the application, as well as to keep evidence that given analysis has been performed. - Decisions serve for reasoning why some decision has been made. They can be used in a similar way as Analyses 15 . - Evaluation, reflection and 360 -degree feedback provide tools for evaluating the user. They can have a form of self -evaluation, as well as external evaluation. It makes sense to closely associate evaluations with milestones or other significant events to add value to achieved results . They can be used to assign
15 In later versions of the Life Project application, these might be associated with forking of sequences, similarly to BPM tools. 54
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
or calculate scores (see Figure 24 and Figure 25), and store them for further analyses or calculations 16 .
Figure 44 : Management tools & aids (artifacts)
Each instance of these artifacts creates and later represents a given object (e.g. there can be more embedded mind maps, mo re decisions, more evaluations, etc. in one project mind map ).
Management tools & aids artifacts can be closely associated with other nodes. It, for instance, makes sense to closely associate an evaluation with a milestone, or a decision with a gate.
Other artifacts are based on URI’s 17 and may reference various objects, such as web pages or files, or be used as visual features only.
3.1.4 Surrounding of Nodes
Nodes of a project mind map are extended of special functionality to support project management at all phases . They include buttons, badges and state information which can be displayed in clos e surrounding of each node.
16 KPI’s or KRI’s, such as value earned up to date (achieved score), value t o time spent on the project (eff ectivity, analogy to ROI), planned value to achieved value and so on. 17 URI = Uniform Resource Identifier 55
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 45 : Surrounding of a node
Buttons , in the initial stage of a mind map creation will offer a possibility to set a type of a node (e.g. to set up a node as action item, event or artifact ), and in later stages to perform some action (e.g. export event to a calendar, delegate action item) .
Surrounding for buttons is displayed on mouse being over the node. This area will contain buttons for selecting a type of a node, delegate action item, flag actio n finished etc. Additional sub -buttons area will be displayed based on selection of specific buttons. Structure of buttons and sub -buttons is an ordered list. Upon selection of an item, sub -items of this item are displayed.
Badges on nodes were mentioned in the subchapter 3.1.3 on artifacts. Any artifact can be closely associated with any node ( drag’n’drop ). Thus, each node has a stack of closely associated artifacts. Specific badges may also have buttons associated. These are displayed when a badge is activated.
Badges are organized in a stack and attached to the left side of a node. Some badges may have additional buttons, suc h as flagging a person as Stakeholder or Team member, jumping to a project plan, etc.
In default the badges are displayed and they can be hidden upon user’s request.
State information of each node can be displayed on a close surrounding of each node . The i nformation includes scheduled dates (start, finish), planned duration, actual duration , score and progress . These properties can also be edited.
In default state details are hidden, but they can be displayed upon user’s request.
56
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
3.1.5 Project Documents
Life Project’s project documents include:
- Project charter - Project mind map - Project calendar - Team members / Stakeholders / Risk project registers - Team members / Stakeholders / Risk response plans - Minor documents
Project charter and project mind map are the first documents that are always created when the project is created in the application. Project charter’s content is on the following figure. Some of the items, such as list of milestones or targets, affect other documents.
ITEM TYPE OPTIONALITY Notes Project name text mandatory Project name is identical with the project mind map root Brief description text recommended Description is copied to the project mind map root Time donation hrs integer optional Targets item(text, text) recommended Targets - if any - automatically created in the project mind map Milestones item(text, text) recommended Milestones - if any - automatically created in the project mind map Team members item(contact / optional Team members can be selected from text) contact list. Copied to a register of team members. Stakeholders list(contact / optional Stakeholders can be selected from a text) contact list, if any. Copied to a register of stakeholders. Risks list(global-risk- optional Risks can be selected from a global register / text) risk register. Copied to a project risk register.
Figure 46: Contents of the project charter
57
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
If a list of team members, a list of stakeholders, or a list of risks is entered into the project charter, they are automatically copied to the respective project plans as indicated in the figure above.
Project structure includes deliverables (targets) and schedule, which are naturally created by the user in the project mind map, application’s central tool for project planning. All other documents are optional for the user, but they possess functionality useful for project planning.
Action items and events can be stored in a project calendar 18 .
Project registers of team members , stakeholders and risks work analogously as subsets of contact lists and global risk register. They help to keep overview people influencing the project, as well as they may be picked up to set up a strategy or a response plan.
Minor documents such as analyses, decisions, embedded mind maps, evaluations and reflections, often outputs from managerial tools, are attached to the project as stand-alone data files.
3.2 Tools in the Life Project
The following tools will be used in the Life Project:
- Project mind map - Activity log - Focus Window - Timeline - Decision Booster - Other managerial tools - Stats and charts
3.2.1 Project Mind Map
As it was previously indicated, mind map is a central tool for project management in the Life Project application.
Modes of Operation
18 For instance, vCalendar provides sufficient functionality for personal project planning. 58
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Having this tool, a project can be planned, executed (tracked), monitored and controlled. The project mind map can either be created, or used. 19 Therefore, it can be operated on in two modes: Edit mode and Use mode.
In Edit mode , the user creates the mind map by adding nodes, setting up properties of these nodes and creating connections (sequences).
In Use mode , the map can be used for purposes of:
- Tracking (selecting activities to be focused on, flagging activities as finished) - Monitoring (overviewing finished tasks, displaying additional properties of nodes, e.g. deadlines, durations, progress, …) - Controlling (using artifacts, such as decisions, analyses, embedded mind maps, reflections, and so on)
Multilayered Project Mind Map
Project mind map may contain various types of nodes and connections, as well as various buttons, properties or embedded items (mind maps, analyses, decisions, and so on) can be displayed on the screen, whereas complexity of the mind map may become enormous. To overcome this setback, I propose a concept called multilayered project mind map . The layers are organized as follows (from background to foreground respectively):
1. Basic layer contains nodes and standard connections. See Case study 3, Figure 28. 2. Action layer contains action items and sequences. See Case study 3, Figure 29 and Figure 30. 3. Surroundings layer contains buttons, badges and state information of nodes. See Figure 45.
The following table shows overview of layers and elements that can be displayed and possible visual operations:
19 This principle is analogous to Dr. Staníček’s Mention-Use principle used in modeling tools. 59
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Layer/elements Default settings Possible operations Basic layer Opacity 100 % Set opacity: 100/50/0 % Nodes Displayed n/a Standard edges Displayed n/a Arrows Displayed n/a Artifact icons Displayed Display/hide Images Displayed Expand/collapse
Action layer Opacity 100 % Set opacity: 100/50/0 % Action/events highlight Displayed Display/hide Canceled actions Hidden Display/hide Sequences Displayed Display/hide
Surroundings layer n/a n/a Badges Displayed Display/hide State information Displayed Display/hide
Buttons displayed when a mouse is over given node Buttons, badge buttons Sub-buttons displayed on demand
Figure 47: Displaying layers and elements of project mind map
By setting opacity of layers or by hiding certain types of elements – as outlined in the table above – the user is able to focus his attention to such parts of the mind map that he finds the most important at any given moment.
3.2.2 Activity Log
Activity log serves for logging raw work progress data when tracking time spent on project activities and it is the main source for statistics and feedback. Contents of the activity log shall follow the pattern outlined on the next figure:
60
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
TimeStamp Program Project Focused item Activity state tag1 tag1Value tag2 tag2Value tag3 tag3Value 26.6.13 9:08:08 University study State Exam State Exam Started Round2 Chapter8
26.6.13 9:30:10 University study State Exam State Exam Stopped Round2 Chapter8
26.6.13 9:31:22 University study State Exam State Exam Started Round2 Chapter9 26.6.13 9:43:30 University study State Exam State Exam Stopped Round2 Chapter9
26.6.13 9:53:55 University study State Exam State Exam Started Round2 Chapter9
Figure 48: Activity log 20
Activities in the log are editable to allow user correct his mistakes, or to allow him to track back activities he performed in the past.
The stats generated from the log can provide immediate feedback to the user, for instance, to analyze his time utilization. As simple log as on the Figure 48 provides a good base for immediate feedback (see the Figure 23: Tracking of time utilization on the page 36).
3.2.3 Focus Window
Window of attention focusing, or Focus Window, is a concept I have originally designed for tracking project activities. Besides the tracking function, it turned out to work as an aid to stay focused on one activity at a time and avoid excessive multitasking.
Focus window consists of three areas:
- Contextual area that serves the user to stay focused on particular activity and remember it’s context - Control area containing tracking buttons - Planner to be able to plan and select planned activity
20 I have designed and used analogous log in MS Excel spreadsheet for the past 12 months for time tracking, calculating statistics and predictions. 61
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
Figure 49 : Focus Window
Backlog and TO -DO ITEMS lists may contain action items from more than one project. Contextual area is updat ed upon selection of particular action item.
Focus Window is bind with the Activity log , where it stores records of work performance by logging a state of the Focus Window labeled with a time stamp .
3.2.4 Timeline
Timeline is a chronological file for storing sig nificant moments of the project, such as achieving milestones , list of reflections or notes.
Figure 50 : Project timeline example: verbal tracking of progress
62
3 The Life Project Design Life Project
3.2.5 Counter
Counter is a simple window containing items that are supposed to occur during project execution. In other words, they are variables observed throughout the project. Main purpose of this tool is to track number of occurrences of these variables, either in time, or not.
This tool can be utilized by people having problems with attention focusing. Examples follow on the figure below.
COUNTER Item Amount Add amount Day dreaming 5 +1 Add Noise disturbance 10 Add Facebook 3 Add Youtube 1 Add
Figure 51: Sample counter
3.2.6 Decision Booster
Decision booster is a concept that shall impose a very-short-time pressure on the user to increase his mental agility. It is a little bit similar to so called pomodoro technique , which aims on dividing work time into small intervals, usually 25 minutes, after which a break is taken, to increase mental agility (Wikipedia.org: Pomodoro Technique ). What the Decision Booster and pomodoro technique have in common is a timer. However, the Decision Booster utilizes very short time intervals (2 to 5 minutes) to push attention focusing to very high level when brainstorming. 21
It can be used in brainstorming activities, when the user does not want to spend too much of a time. For example, it can be used to quickly develop a project charter (see Figure 46). At each item that the user feels need to be filled in, he can switch on this optional tool. For instance he can set a timer to 3 minutes to think about stakeholders. When the time is off, given field of the form, field for stakeholders in
21 Background of this method is based on my observation when writing tests, when the highest burst of ideas comes up in the “last minute“. 63
3 The Life Project Design Life Project this case, is disabled. The user cannot go on writing/brainstorming, unless the tool is deactivated.
3.2.7 Other Managerial Tools
Managerial tools were briefly outlined at various parts of the thesis. Among those there shall be:
- Analytical tools (break -down stru ctures, affinity diagrams and matrices 22 ) - Decision supporti ve tools (weighted and unweighted selection methods 23 ) - Evaluation/reflection/feedback tools (forms including scales and scores 24 )
Figure 52 : Sample managerial tools
3.3 Future Developments
Time was short, scope creep crept in and the design part lacks description of all intended functionality such as portfolio and program view to support personal program and portfolio management support goal setting , integration of calendars and Kanban -board-like planning tool , as well as more extensive description of the domain’s conceptual model that would be ready for coding. Gamification framework developed by Werbach -Hunter, 2012 was intended to be utilized to outline target behaviors of the users, as well as uncover activity cycles and choose the right evaluation tools to provide user’s feedback. Many of these tools, however, have been proposed in the theoretical part of this thesis. This summary may serve as
22 Such as SWOT matri x. 23 See the subchapter 2.1.4 Selecting Projects 24 See Figure 24 and Figure 25 64
3 The Life Project Design Life Project an outline for future development of the presented project management approach and implementation of an experimental application.
It is my strong belief that – if implemented – features proposed in this thesis would make a great application for managing small projects from the beginning to the end.
65
4 Conclusion Life Project
4 Conclusion
In the chapter on Personal Project Management I have defined personal projects, programs and portfolio. Further I described tools and techniques used in modern project management. New method on project management was proposed and demonstrated on a number of case studies. This objective of my thesis has been achieved.
The chapter on the Life Project design describes a story of an application aiming at knowledge workers. I propose a design of an integrated application based on mind mapping as a central tool for project management, equipped with a number of supportive tools for project execution and tracking.
66
5 Table of Figures Life Project
5 Table of Figures
Figure 1: Relation of projects, programs and portfolios for the purpose of personal project management ...... 13 Figure 2: Comparison of scoring methods ...... 16 Figure 3: Work breakdown structure – tree and ordered list ...... 18 Figure 4: Sequence of activities ...... 20 Figure 5: Network diagram – Activity-on-Node, AON ...... 20 Figure 6: Network diagram – Activity-on-Arrow, AOA ...... 21 Figure 7: Example of parametric estimating ...... 21 Figure 8: Comparison of triangular and binomial distribution ...... 22 Figure 9: Kanban/Scrum-ban board example 1 ...... 24 Figure 10: Kanban/Scrum-ban board example 2 ...... 24 Figure 11: Simple risk response plan ...... 25 Figure 12: Impact of mind mapping on project management according to Toi-Perry, 2013 ...... 26 Figure 13: Case study 1 project mind map, collapsed ...... 27 Figure 14: Case study 1 project mind map, expanded ...... 27 Figure 15: Case study 2 project mind map, semi-collapsed ...... 28 Figure 16: Case study 2 project mind map expanded ...... 28 Figure 17: Characteristics of the case studies ...... 29 Figure 18: Comparison of results with findings of Toi-Perry, 2013 ...... 29 Figure 19: Cumulative flowchart ...... 32 Figure 20: Parametric estimating and consumption of resources ...... 33 Figure 21: Map of chapters from Larson-Gray, 2011 ...... 34 Figure 22: Population characteristics of chapters in Larson-Gray, 2011 ...... 34 Figure 23: Tracking of time utilization ...... 36 Figure 24: Sample reflection sheet for 360-degree feedback ...... 37 Figure 25: Sample consolidated 360-degree report ...... 37 Figure 26: GTD approach to dealing with “stuff”, colored ...... 39 Figure 27: Personal project lifecycle ...... 40 Figure 28: Identification phase (emerging mind map) ...... 42 Figure 29: Organizing phase (sequencing actions) ...... 43
67
5 Table of Figures Life Project
Figure 30: Doing & tracking and monitoring phases: mind map with and without sequences ...... 44 Figure 31: Close-out phase of the Board meeting organization project ...... 44 Figure 32: Connecting objects ...... 46 Figure 33: Object: Node, Edge ...... 46 Figure 34: Hierarchy of Nodes ...... 46 Figure 35: Special types of Nodes ...... 47 Figure 36: Edge: connecting Nodes one another ...... 48 Figure 37: Basic elements of a mind map...... 49 Figure 38: Actions, events and sequence arrows ...... 50 Figure 39: Actionable artifacts ...... 51 Figure 40: Example of weighted checklist (“expanded” artifact) ...... 52 Figure 41: People & groups (artifacts) ...... 53 Figure 42: Identified risk (artifact) ...... 53 Figure 43: Plans (artifacts) ...... 54 Figure 44: Management tools & aids (artifacts) ...... 55 Figure 45: Surrounding of a node ...... 56 Figure 46: Contents of the project charter ...... 57 Figure 47: Displaying layers and elements of project mind map ...... 60 Figure 48: Activity log ...... 61 Figure 49: Focus Window ...... 62 Figure 50: Project timeline example: verbal tracking of progress ...... 62 Figure 51: Sample counter ...... 63 Figure 52: Sample managerial tools ...... 64
68
6 Bibliography Life Project
6 Bibliography
ALLAN, David. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 0-14-200028-0.
AMBLER, Scott W. Agility@Scale: Strategies for Scaling Agile Software Development: The Principles of Lean Software Development [online]. IBM, DeveloperWorks, 2010 [retrieved on 5 th January, 2014]. Available at:
BEEL, Joeran–LANGER, Stefan. An Exploratory Analysis of Mind Maps . In Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering (DocEng’11), Mountain View, California, USA, pages 81-84 [online]. ACM, 2011. [Retrieved on 31 December, 2013]. Available at:
COVEY, Stephen R. 7 návyků skutečně efektivních lidí. Vyd. 1. Praha: Management Press, 2006. 342 s. ISBN 80-7261-156-9.
DVOŘÁK, Drahoslav–RÉPAL, Martin–MAREČEK Martin. Řízení portfolia projektů: nejlepší praktiky portfolio managementu. Vyd. 1. Brno: Computer Press, 2011. 198 s. ISBN 9788025130759.
FLEENOR, John W.–PRINCE, Jeffrey Michael. Using 360-Degree Feedback In Organizations [online]. USA, Greensboro, North Carolina: Center for Creative Leadership, 1997 [retrieved on 7 th January, 2014]. Available at:
Great Britain Office of Government Commerce. Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2™. Norwich, UK: The Statiopnery Office (TSO), 2009. ISBN 9780113310593.
GRIFFITHS, Mike. Software Estimates - Managing Expectations via Ranges [online]. Leading Answers, 2008 [retrieved on 30 th December, 2013]. Available at:
69
6 Bibliography Life Project
HAKALA, David. 16 Ways to Measure Employee Performance [online]. HR World, 2008 [retrieved on 6 th January, 2014]. Available at:
HEROLDOVÁ, B. Vztah ke smrti a jeho souvislost s angažovaností v rámci životního projektu. Brno, 2011. Bachelor’s thesis. MU-Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies.
HOLWEG, Matthias. The genealogy of lean production. I n Journal of Operations Management (p. 420-437).
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 10006:2003, Quality management systems - Guidelines for quality management in projects. 2nd edition. ISO, 2003.
KNIBERG, Henrik. Kanban vs Scrum: How to make the most of both [online]. Crisp.se, 2009 [retrieved at 31 st December, 2013]. Available at:
LI, Yikang–LANGE, Mike–STOCKS, Cody. Monitoring Forecasting Systems – Revisit Trigg’s Tracking Signal [online]. Micron Technology, 2012 [retrieved on 15 th December 2013]. Available at:
MANTEL, S. J. et al. Project Management in Practice . 4th edition. United States of America: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011. ISBN 9780470533017.
PITAŠ, Jaromír et al. Národní standard kompetencí projektového řízení verze 3.1- web. Second – revised edition. Brno: Společnost pro projektové řízení, o.s., 2010. ISBN 978-80-214-4058-6.
PITAŠ, Jaromír et al. Národní standard kompetencí projektového řízení verze 3.2- web [online]. Third – revised edition. Brno: Společnost pro projektové řízení, o.s., 2012. Revised on 20 th August, 2013 [retrieved on 28 th December, 2013]. Available at:
70
6 Bibliography Life Project
Project Management Institute, Inc. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. 3 rd edition. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, 2008. ISBN 978-1-933890-51-7.
Project Management Institute, Inc. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge. 4 th edition. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, 2013. ISBN 978-1-935589-67-9.
RÁČEK, Jaroslav–SOCHOR, Jiří. Plánovací a odhadovací nástroje [online]. Brno: Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University, 2010 [retrieved on 29 th December, 2013]. Available at:
ROSENAU, Milton D. Řízení projektů. 3. vyd. Brno: Computer Press, 2007. 344 s. ISBN 978-80-251-1506-0.
SCHELL, J. The Art of Game Design. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2008. ISBN 9780123694966.
SCHWABER, Ken–SUTHERLAND, Jeff. The Scrum Guide [online]. Scrum.org, 2011 [retrieved on 31 st December, 2013]. Available at:
SCHWARTZ, Tony et al. Be Excellent at Anything . UK: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2010. ISBN 9781849834322.
STANÍČEK, Zdenko. SSME*Service Systems, Modeling, Execution, Education, Evaluation. Brno: Masaryk University – Faculty of Informatics, 2009. Manuscript.
THOMAS, Janice–MULLALY, Mark. Researching the value of project management. Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute Inc, 2008.
TOI, Henry–PERRY, Chad. How mind maps affect the practice of project management in SMEs in Gibaran Journal of Applied Management; Vol 6 (2013) [online]. Australian Institute of Business, AIB Publications Pty Ltd, 2013 [retrieved on 1 st January, 2014]. ISSN 1836-5159. Available at:
71
6 Bibliography Life Project
TROUT, Harry. 360 Degree Feedback Report [online]. USA, Texas: Texas State Agency, 2002. Available at: < http://www.utexas.edu/research/cswr/survey/site/leader/Sample_360_Report.pdf>
VÁGNER, Ivan. Systém management . 2 nd edition.Brno: Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, 2007. ISBN 9788021042643.
WATSON, W. R. et al. Learning Management Systems: An overview and roadmap of the systemic application of computers to education . In F. M. M. Neto & F. V. Brasileiro (Eds.), Advances in computer-supported learning (p. 66-96). London: Information Science Publishing, 2007.
WERBACH, Kevin–Hunter, Dan. For The Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Philadelphia: Wharton Digital Press, 2012.
WIKIPEDIA CONTRIBUTORS. Pomodoro Technique [online], last modified on 9 th December 2013 at 13:52. Wikipedia. [retrieved on 7 th January, 2014]. Available at:
WIKIPEDIA CONTRIBUTORS. Self-management [online], last modified on 10 th December 2013 at 13:52. Wikipedia. [retrieved on 2 nd January, 2014]. Available at:
72
7 Used Software Life Project
7 Used Software
During elaboration of this thesis I used the following software:
- MS Office to write the thesis and create tables - FreeMind, an open source mind mapping software - Gimp for processing bitmap graphics, open source - Inkscape for processing vector graphics, open source - Cacoo, a web-based tool for creating simple graphics, free license
73
Annexes
CD including:
- Mind maps (FreeMind) - Life Project poster v0-1 – proposal of elements and tools