Please find an update below. The missing part in the OFBiz- implementation is
the billing of materials used in the project. However the orders can be used
for this purpose, but a separate materials plan and materials usage would be
preferable.
**************************************************
Actor definitions
-----------------
Client
------
The client is an internal customer or an external customer.
Project manager
---------------
A person that manages the project, and are responsible for reporting to the
internal steering group and the customer
Project role
------------
As the project is going through the four phases (analysis, preparation,
development and delivery) there is need for the different roles. In fact
there is a complete organisation of roles delivering the results to the
client. In the mini-organisation there is at least a need for the following
roles:
. Account manager. Responsible for keeping track of time and materials
. Change manager. Most project fails because of having too weak
staffing on this role. The key role of not accepting changes from the client
without having a formal process of agreeing upon the change in the agreement
terms. This could be
o Changes in the agreement text
o Change in delivered materials
o Change in the number of hours
o Change in the fixed cost
o Change in the delivery date
. Verification manager. Verifying the project delivery before it is
handed to the client.
General delivery project story
------------------------------
A company using project as a means of delivering the products, are most
likely company that are delivering complex products that cannot be
standardized into a standard organisation, since either the nature of the
product or the nature of the customer makes it the most cost effective to
deliver the product as a project.
Before diving into the details of projects it is important to define the two
basic project pricing models: Fixed price and Time and material. The pricing
model gives directions onto how the project is run, and a
time-and-material-project can be converted into a Fixed-price- project (but I
have never been in a project that has converted from Fixed-price to
Time-and-Material).
The Fixed-price-project means that the customer is not interested in the
time and the materials used in the project. The Client is only interested in
the end result. How much is ready and how much is left.
The Time-and-materials-project the customer are interested in all three and
the project are committed to deliver reports about progress, time and
material usage.
In both pricing models, the change-orders are the most important part of the
project managers work, since the changes will need to be incorporated into
the plans, agreements, dates, the staffing and the cost. Changes may or may
not change time and/or materials.
Ideas to incorporate
--------------------
Using BOM in project management.
Managing logistics plans for materials used.
Dependencies
------------
. Sales Representative Leads Prospects from RFQ to Sales Order (This
needs more text)
. Placing Customer Places a Sales Order (This needs a rewrite)
. Customer Places Order for Quote (Needs to be written, for a wide
perspective)
. External Reporting
. Budgeting
Story
------
There has been done an analysis or a bid-phase, where the parties have
agreed to deliver a project. The requirements are attached to the agreement
and there has been made an outlined plan that consists of a start date and
an end date of the project. The out-line plan for the project and the
sub-projects are not written before the Analysis phase has been done.
The project will be divided into the remaining phases of the project, where
the subprojects are delivering into the main project. The plans of the main
project and the sub-projects will have milestones, and at a milestone there
can be a decision point. The decision is made either by steering group,
project management team or technical team. All decisions are documented.
The agreement with the client will be used as a base for delivery and for
the plan, and is the base for the end date and the cost estimate. The
agreement will also be used to plan the materials used during the project
(by the logistics team). The following documents should be produced from the
analysis phase and should be reflected in the agreement:
. Functional specifications describing what will be delivered to the
client. This will be a detail of the requirement in the agreement,
describing how the requirements will be implemented. For each functional
specification there will be written acceptance criterions
. A Bill of Materials (BOM) that describes what products and documents
that will be delivered internally and externally to aid the final delivery
(including verification and training).
Using the company model for handling incidents during the project, an
incident can be received from the customer as a request for additional
functionality, or an internal incident. As the incident is classified it can
be classified as a change.
Changes are handed to the change manager, and the change manager classifies
the change into smaller changes that can be done outside a change board, or
needs to be handled by the Change board. If the Change manager hands the
change to the Change board, the change will be prioritized and may be added
to the project as a Change order (based upon a cost benefit analysis). The
change order is added as a sub-project with separate usages for time and
materials (that are reported and invoiced separately).
To keep track of what to deliver to the client the Bill Of Materials (BOM)
is used to keep track of what has been delivered and what is still remaining
(this should be an internal list, and is not reported to the customer).
******************************
Regards
Torstein Hegbom
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: David E Jones [mailto:d...@me.com]
Sendt: 26. juni 2009 17:56
Til: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Emne: Project Story (was: ASF Board Report for 2009-06)
Torstein,
I apologize, I should have been more clear.
Is this something that you would like to see become part of the UBPL?
I ask because it is unclear for 2 reasons:
1. it does not use the same style and conventions as other stories in
UBPL
2. it does not attempt to reuse (and modify/extend/etc as needed)
existing stories in UBPL
-David
On Jun 26, 2009, at 9:20 AM, Torstein Hegbom wrote:
It should be a new story, and maybe more than one. The companies
that I can
see are the following:
* Construction companies
* Installing companies
* IT development projects
Basicly all companies that creates something using projects as a way
of
working (establishing an organisation, has its own budget and has a
start-date and an end-date).
Companies that are using projects for the way of working multiple
projects
to make deliveries. The major challenge is to keep track of
materials used
to make deliveries. Should the project make or should it buy (I
tested the
BOM-simulator, and that could be used for that decision). If it
decides to
by it will use an order. If it decides to create, it will use tasks
and
man-hours.
All of these companies has something in common: There will be
something
delivered to a customer, and there needs to be deliver documents to
go along
with it. Therefore there is a need of a list of deliveries as well
as tasks.
Torstein
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: David E Jones [mailto:d...@me.com]
Sendt: 23. juni 2009 00:01
Til: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Emne: Re: SV: ASF Board Report for 2009-06
This looks like a good start Torstein.
How do you see this fitting in with the stories that are currently in
the UBPL (ie:
http://docs.ofbiz.org/display/OFBREQDES/Universal+Business+Process+Library+I
ndex)?
-David
On Jun 22, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Torstein Hegbom wrote:
Please find the user story below:
-------------------------
1.1 A delivery project
A delivery project will deliver some functionality, where the
functionality
is based upon a requirement from a business organisation. The
functionality
is some text that describes an organisation, some processes and some
business rules.
The delivery can be a physical piece, a building or it can be an IT
system.
All of these has in common that there is a need for a project
organisation
to deliver. The project will have a planned start-date and a planned
end-date. The project will have an project organisation and a project
manager.
The most important role of the project manager is to manage the
changes
impacted on the project organization. This can be changes external
to the
project, changes in the project staffing or changes in what and when
to
deliver. If the project manager fails to manage these details, the
project
will fail. However having a good steering group and a good change
management, the project manager has good prospects to succeed.
1.2 Two different preconditions
Below there is mentioned two different cases where a project can be
initiated.
1.2.1 A new delivery for a new customer
If there is not an established customer, there may be a RFQ (request
for
information), and there may be a bid-process. In any case the result
will be
an agreement for a delivery, with delivery-terms. The agreement will
outline
a delivery date and the functional requirements.
1.2.2 A new delivery for an existing customer
If there is an established customer, there may be cases where the
line
organisation finds the delivery too big (too many man-hours) that
cannot be
done in an ordinary maintenance delivery-release, and decides to
establish a
new project.
1.3 Change orders
All changes related in dates or functionality will be handled by the
project
manager (and the change manager), by change-orders. The change
orders can be
written by the customer or the supplier, using a computer or a hand
held
device.
These change orders are analysed and estimated by the project
organisation.
The analysis will describe the impact on the delivery date and the
added
cost for the customer. The change board will finally sign the change
order,
and it will added to the agreement.
1.4 Project model
All organizations should have a project model, which is used for all
delivery projects. This will make the steering group committee have
an
easier job of understanding the status of the project. The project
model
will describe the phases and the decision points in the project. The
project
model can vary from company to company. One project model can be a
delivery
project that has four phases:
. Analysis phase
. Delivery phase
. Verification phase
. Deployment and handover phase
Note that the project can be split into smaller projects, but all
subprojects will have all phases, independent upon the method used
for
implementing the requirements.
1.4.1 Decision point
Within each phase there will be milestones. Each of the milestones
has a
delivery that can be celebrated by a cake. If the achievement is not
applicable for a cake, it is not a milestone. Connected to a
milestone there
can be a decision-point. A decision that cannot be made before the
milestone
has been passed. The decision point is related to the project and the
information to the decision is quantifiable, and could relate to
cost and/or
resources. Milestones can have dependencies and can be used as an
outline
plan before adding the tasks.
The decision points are numbered DP1, DP2, etc, and the decision
will be
documented, so that the next project will learn from this project.
1.5 Analysis phase
The main goal of the analysis phase is to detail requirements and
details
the plan. The result should be a functional description giving
details into
the specifications, what and how to deliver and the dates of the
plan.
The following documents should be produced from the analysis phase:
. Functional specifications describing what will be delivered,
connected to the requirement in the agreement
. For each functional specification there will be written acceptance
criterions
. The plan will be detailed
. A Bill of Materials (BOM). A document that describes what pieces
and
documents that will be delivered internally and externally to aid
the final
delivery (including verification and training).
1.6 Delivery phase
The delivery project will be to produce the results described during
the
analysis phase, and to merge in the changes that are arriving from
the
change-management.
1.7 Verification phase
During the verification phase the customer/klient will verify each
piece
that has been delivered from the delivery phase. Normally there will
be an
internal verification before the customer/klient verification is
started.
The number of changes during this phase is more than in any other
phase,
since everybody now can understand how the end-result will work in
practice.
The change-board will be an aid to keep the process moving and
decide if a
given change will be delivered in the project or the first change-
delivery
after the project.
1.8 Deployment and handover phase
During deployment there may be a migration process from the old to
the new.
Typically the migration is a sub-project.
After the deployment has been done there will be a handover phase
where the
project is scaling down after each piece has been handed over and the
training has been finalized.
When all handover has been done there is a final acceptance, the
agreement
has been fulfilled and there may be written an agreement for
maintenance.
---------------------
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: Torstein Hegbom [mailto:torst...@itpolaris.no]
Sendt: 19. juni 2009 12:29
Til: dev@ofbiz.apache.org; 'Jacques Le Roux'
Emne: SV: ASF Board Report for 2009-06
I don't have access to the space. :-(
Torstein
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: Jacques Le Roux [mailto:jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com]
Sendt: 19. juni 2009 10:44
Til: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Emne: Re: ASF Board Report for 2009-06
I think you could create a story there
http://docs.ofbiz.org/pages/listpages-dirview.action?key=OFBREQDES
But I'm not sure if you have access to this space. Then adding a
comment at
the right place would be taken into account
Thanks
Jacques
From: "Torstein Hegbom" <torst...@itpolaris.no>
I have been testing the project manager module, and maybe there
should be a
connection to content-management, or something else. Before a
project
starts
there is a set of requirements and suggestions.
A sub-project has a start and an end, where purpose is to make some
deliveries. The deliveries are described in the requirements. These
requirements are an attachment to an agreement with the klient.
When a project has been decided the requirements are frozen, and a
Bill Of
Material can be created for a sub-projet. The Bill Of Materials will
describe what the sub-project will deliver, and the tasks in the
project-plan describes how, who and when to deliver each item in
the Bill
Of
Materials.
Torstein
-----Opprinnelig melding-----
Fra: Jacques Le Roux [mailto:jacques.le.r...@les7arts.com]
Sendt: 17. juni 2009 02:00
Til: dev@ofbiz.apache.org
Emne: Re: ASF Board Report for 2009-06
I think it's a bit harder for the wiki part (we hage a project
manager but
no wiki), thus need for requirements collection and
design thereafter
Anyway, David already sent his links...
Jacques
From: "Ean Schuessler" <e...@brainfood.com>
I think the most reasonable first step would be for us to build
importers that mirror the state of JIRA into OFBiz project
management.
All user accounts should be modeled as Party with the proper
corresponding roles. Once we see that we can get to a parallel
level of
functionality we could then transition OFBiz development onto our
own
infrastructure. Achieving this result should speak more firmly
about our
intent than any spoken claim and will convince other Apache
projects
that we have the capability to execute on the plan.
Hans Bakker wrote:
In general these subjects were handled by Tim, perhaps better he
reacts
on that?
i was referring to the last report about Infrastructure,
shouldn't we
mention that we are now using contegix resources and are waiting
for the
infrateam to respond?
Then there was also a request to use ofbiz for the apache
administration/content management, shouldn't we say we are ready
for
that and are interested to make ofbiz suitable for that?
