The Diamond model Flashcards
A critical view of the ‘iron triangle’?
It encourages a strait-jacket mentality and turns the solution to every problem into a request for more money or time or both. I think the triangle is a crutch for poor project management
• Loosening time constraint doesn’t always mean higher quality.
• More money, likely more people = more training, more communication, network effects.
• Scaling quality/scope up or down entails risks. Some projects have simply unfeasible scopes, regardless of cost and time.
Examples
Sydney opera house
• Over budget by 1500%
Los Angeles Metro
First phase:
- Completed 8 months ahead of schedule
- No budget overruns
- Construction safety record 50% better than national average
- “Project of the year” award by PMI (1993)
- Remaining phases of project dropped due to low usage.
Project success measures?
- Efficiency e.g. meeting schedule, meeting budget, Yield, changes, other efficiencies
- Impact on customer e.g. meeting requirements, benefit to customer, extent of use, customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand name recognition
- Impact on team e.g. team satisfaction, skill development, retention, team morale, team members growth, no burnout.
- Business and Direct success e.g. sales, profit, ROI, ROE, market share, cash flow, service quality, cycle-time, organisational measures, regulations approval.
- Preparing for future e.g. new technology, new market, new core competencies, new product, new organisational capabilities.
Flexible and adaptive PM approach
- Many projects fail to achieve their expected results or are not completed on time and within budget
- But failure is not just about bad (project) management
- Fail often occurs in projects in well-managed projects run by experienced managers and organisations
- Traditional PM assumes all projects can be managed in the same way - ‘one-size-fits all’
- Need an approach to project management which is ‘adaptive and flexible’
Diamond model use
- identifies project type
- used to access project risks and benefits
- so right PM approach can be selected
Novelty?
• How new is the product to customer and users (i.e. the market)?
• Uncertainty of a project’s goal and; uncertainty in the marketplace
• May have to create a market if customers don’t know they need it yet e.g. Sony Walkman, created a market.
- The more Novel, the more skills team members will develop/require.
Novelty levels?
- Derivative - extending or improving existing p/s e.g. developing a new PC
- Platform - developing or producing new generations of existing p/s to existing markets e.g. new car generation
- Breakthrough - introducing a new product that no one has seen before e.g. Walkman
Novelty example
Airbus A380
• 1st to market
• Break from previous Airbus families (where progress was sequential from A300 to A340)
• Largest passenger airliner in world (in competition with Boing 787 Dreamliner)
• 50% more floor space than second largest airliner (which is the Dreamliner)
• Somewhere between breakthrough and platform.
Technology?
- How much new technology is used? (new to the company)
- Project’s level of technological uncertainty
- 4 levels of technological uncertainty
Design freeze?
When you make decision of final design/output/outcome of project.
- Early design freeze (do this when there isn’t much uncertainty)
Freeze the design prior to project initiation and technology integration. Assumes that the final configuration of the system can be fully known or predicted at the outset. - Late design freeze (when there’s lots of uncertainty as need to allow time, throughout earlier stages when not sure of end results may be wasted due to working on different ideas before freezing design, this can very expensive. If design keeps changing, this costs more and can delay project even more). Keep system design as a flexible as possible at the outset to cope with emergent events, changing customer demands, and new technological uncertainties
Technology levels?
- Low-tech project
• No new technology is integrated
• Examples: bridges, road building, installation of new telephone network
• Almost no technological uncertainties
• Design freeze set very early, often before initiation of the project - Medium-tech project
• Integration of single new technology
• Example: improvement of existing product (e.g. stretch design of an aircraft)
• Early design freeze, but some testing, evaluation and corrections in the design or shaping of the product
• Have to wait a little bit longer to freeze design. - High-tech project
• Integration of several new technologies (e.g. CGI)
• Examples: large development project; new product generation specifications must remain
• flexible for a longer period of time to allow for optimal trade-offs
Much later design freeze and extended development period. Normally towards middle of project life cycle. - Super high-tech project
• Integration of several non-existing technologies
• Examples: Arpanet project (development of internet based on packet switching technologies), Apollo Moon Landing
• Extensive periods to develop and prove the new, not-yet existing technologies
• Very rare to have a type D in real life.
• Very late design freeze planned at the start
Technology example
Airbus A380
• Several new technologies integrated
• Composite materials (e.g. carbon fibre reinforced plastic)
• Final design configuration not frozen until as late as Spring 2001
• (April 2005 – First flight)
• High tech and in between platform and breakthrough.
Complexity?
- How complex is the system and its subsystems?
- Measures the complexity of the project (not product)
- 3 levels of complexity
- Complexity affects the project organisation (level of bureaucracy and formality needed to manage it).
- Key challenge is ‘systems integration’.
- The more complex the system, the bigger the challenge.
Complexity levels?
- Assembly - self contained component e.g. post it notes
- System - single system with multiple functions but a common goal e.g. aircraft
- Array - systems with independent functions but each with a common goal e.g. airport
Complexity example: Heathrow terminal 5
Array project:
• 16 major projects
• 147 sub-projects
• Biggest construction at the time in Europe
• 4 ½ billion pounds
• At peak nearly 6000 workers on site
• Redesigned roof to update security system after 9/11
• Workers had iris scans and finger scans to get onto construction site
• delivered on time and on budget (3 days early)
• No one died
• From quality perspective, won a few awards, one of top 10 terminals in the world in regard to shopping and quality standards.
• Planned for 20/26 years
• Up until now everything was good un till, during transition period moving from pm state to operational state, issues occurred with baggage and staff.
• Cost them over 40 million
• 40,000 bags lost
• Took 20 days to sort out
• 300 flights cancelled
• Terminal 2 learnt from this and gradually increased numbers of passengers.
