Page 75 - Organizational Project Management
P. 75
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),
©2003 Project Management Institute, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA 59