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Appendix B—Evolution of the OPM3 Standard


                        and KPIs. The testers examined the content for compliance with the style
                        and grammar guides. In addition, they examined whether the Best Practice
                        and the flow through its Capabilities simply made sense. The purpose of
                        the initial review was to ensure that each Best Practice was, in fact, a Best
                        Practice. Each of the Capabilities, Outcomes and KPIs was then unit tested
                        against the Best Practices. The dependencies between Best Practices were
                        verified through a series of system tests. Finally, following revisions to the
                        documentation, the complete Model was again subjected to regression
                        testing to ensure the quality of the product prior to providing it to the beta
                        testers.




                  B.9 LEADERSHIP TRANSITION
                        In November 2002, after more than four years of leading the OPM3 Project
                        Team, John Schlichter passed the leadership of the program to his deputy
                        Ralf Friedrich, but continued for six months as an advisor to the manage-
                        ment team. Bill Haeck became Ralf Friedrich's deputy.




                B.10 GETTING THE STANDARD IN A TANGIBLE FORMAT
                        As 2002 came to a close, the Guidance Team began to focus on refining the
                        emerging Model, on optimizing the interface of the Model for the user, and
                        on preparing to solicit and react to the results of beta testing. One of the
                        primary challenges the Model presented was its size and complexity. The
                        Model had to be packaged and presented in a manner that would not be
                        intimidating. To organize the massive quantity of data, making it accessible
                        and usable to organizations, John Schlichter, Ade Lewandowski, and Fred
                        Abrams collaborated on designing a prototype solution. The prototype con-
                        sisted of three directories presenting information on the Best Practices,
                        Capabilities, Outcomes, and Key Performance Indicators in a systematic and
                        accessible manner. The prototype was presented at a meeting of the Guid-
                        ance Team in January 2003 and it was approved. To advance the work of
                        creating these directories, a Model Team was created, led by former
                        Research Team co-lead Fred Abrams and former risk manager, Glenn Car-
                        leton.
                          One of the most important decisions made early in 2003 was that OPM3
                        would be presented to the public in a multi-media format. This decision
                        resolved the issue of page count, which had presented cost and size issues.
                        The decision also presented new and compelling opportunities for arranging
                        and displaying the encyclopedic scope of the Knowledge, Assessment, and
                        Improvement elements of the Standard.
                          Prior to providing the Model to the beta testing community, the work
                        that had begun in 2001 to ensure the quality of the Model had to be com-
                        pleted. First and foremost, there was a considerable amount of work to be
                        done to verify that the dependencies across and between Best Practices and
                        Capabilities were sound. Also, a review of all the Model's components was
                        needed to ensure that they were well written, with consistent tense, tone,
                        and syntax. To accomplish this, the Guidance Team empowered a select
                        group of individuals, appropriately named the Extreme Review Team (ERT),




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