Transcript Management and organizational structure of large scale innovative projects Craig A. Stewart Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute; Associate Dean, Research Technologies 19 July 2011 [email protected] Presented at.

Management and organizational structure
of large scale innovative projects
Craig A. Stewart
Executive Director, Pervasive Technology Institute; Associate
Dean, Research Technologies
19 July 2011
[email protected]
Presented at FLEET** Working Group Meeting, 19 July, Vienna, Austria
Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13403
**http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=PROJ_ICT&ACTION=D&CAT=PROJ&RCN=99182
1
The FP7 FET projects will be of extremely large scale
• This requires perhaps unprecedented project management and
execution within a public and open future technologies project
• “FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, research
initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance
should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological
innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as
novel benefits for society.”
http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/home_en.html
• The only ways to achieve ‘novel benefits for society’ are government
funded large scale deployment or successful commercialization. How
do you do this over 10 years and avoid being at risk of disruptive
change (in the sense of Clayton M. Christensen)
• Identifying and realizing value
– Applied science and engineering [a la Wagner]
– Basic science and engineering [a la Donizetti]
– They are different; may operate at different timescales and with different
reliability; both may well be needed for a FET Flagship project
2
James Bryant Conant, President,
Harvard University, 1933-1953. Letter to
the Editor, NY Times, 13 August 1945.
Regarding applied research: “Research
of this nature, like that in industry, can be
effectively organized and planned
because there are very definitely defined
objectives.”
James B. Conant, 1933.
Credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Regarding basic research: “There is only
one proved method of assisting the
advancement of pure science – that of
picking men of genius, backing them
heavily and leaving them to direct
themselves.”
3
Net-enabled Business Innovation Cycle
Capabilities & Competencies
Hi
Assessing
External Customer &
External Market
Internal Organization
Internal Client
Value (CV)
Low
Hi
Value Potential
Executing
Business Innovation
for Growth (BI)
Matching
with Economic
Opportunities (EO)
Low
Choosing
Enabling/Emerging
Technologies (ET)
Communicating
Business Initiatives
Conveying New
IT Insights
Time
ET
ET
ET
©Bradley C. Wheeler, Indiana University
www.ppttube.com/presentations/sal_innovationit.ppt
Used with permission
Four Distinct Types of Routines
Universe of ____
Identifying
Assessing
Filtering
Like a funnel
Deciding
“Vetted List of _____ for Adoption Consideration”
Adapted from ©Bradley C. Wheeler, Indiana University
The Net-enabled Business Innovation Cycle (NEBIC). Used
with permission
Project Management
• What are the key promises?
– # of 2nd level leaders (direct reports to CEO > # key promises)
• What is discovery, what is development and delivery?
• With projects of the proposed scale, plan a development and
delivery plan with defined areas of delivery and discovery
– Not “we’ll discover and good things will just happen as a result”
– Not “a miracle happens here”
• 10 year project plan with incremental deliverables and contingency
plans essential
• Project Plan is not enough without a Program Execution Plan (latter
is more detailed text, includes interface agreements and service
level agreements)
• If economic benefit is promised then there must be an economic
development subcomponent of the overall plan
6
A large project needs…
• Exactly one
–
–
–
–
–
–
CEO
CFO
CIO
Chief Technology Transfer Officer
Chief Compliance Officer
Chief Project Manager
• May need one of the following
– Chief Scientist
– Chief Technical Officer
– Chief Systems Engineer
• At least one
– Production facilities
– Test facilities
7
•
Governance
Project management
– Strategy vs tactic (those things not identified as strategically important are by their omission
identified as not important)
– Working groups – innovating, brainstorming, making recommendations
– Command and control – making decisions and enacting them
– Input rights, decision rights (Weill & Ross – “IT Governance: How Top Performers Manage
IT Decision Rights for Superior Results”)
– Information flow – needs to be free upwards
•
Agreements
– Interface agreements
– Service Level agreements
•
Trust
– Essential for proper resolution of conflicts and problems
•
Money
– Money is distilled personality; money is a dream; money is a nightmare; you can never
accept money as a gift (From H. Miller, Money Isn't Is Everything, ISBN ISBN 10:
0881771325 and The Seven Laws of Money, M. Phillips & S. Rasberry)
– Money and time can be somewhat exchangeable
– Big projects work well when money is burned steadily (this is not an Optimal Control
Theory problem!)
8
Collaboration, project management, systems
engineering
• “Collaboration is not the same as cooperation. Collaboration
requires alignment around a common goal. Collaboration is about
doing something together. Collaboration only lasts as long as the
alignment around common purpose lasts.” James Hilton, U. of
Virginia [Quote courtesy Brad Wheeler, IU]
• Once you have them by the budget, their hearts, minds, and time
allocations will follow
• Project management incremental deliverables of value essential
– Funding release based on achieving milestones
– A budget plan should not be a commitment when completion of
deliverables is optional
– But project management should reward honesty
• Project management and systems engineering are different
• Systems engineering may well be needed as part of a FET program
– This implies multiple full time systems engineers and a formal systems
engineering system
9
IT infrastructure and Virtual Organizations
• Cyberinfrastructure consists of computing systems, data
storage systems, advanced instruments and data
repositories, visualization environments, and people, all
linked together by software and high performance
networks to improve research productivity and enable
breakthroughs not otherwise possible
• eScience may be European for Cyberinfrastructure
• Any large scale project must have its own
cyberinfrastructure
• The Flagship projects will be a large Virtual
Organization, collaborating over geographic distance.
Everyone involved should read some of the key literature
on VO collaboration over distance
10
11
Cyberinfrastructure tools for collaboration
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Project management
Version control
Bug tracking
Trouble ticket tracking
Knowledge Base
Document control
Web content management
Group (Virtual Organization) collaboration
Telecollaboration (high def)
The only thing worse than no tools for some category of
function is two tools
12
Project management and related tools
Project management
Microsoft Project
Jira?
Drupal
Bug Tracking
Jira
Bugzilla
Trouble ticket tracking
Request tracker
Knowledge base management
Use one – but trouble ticket systems are not knowledge bases
13
14
Version control
Tool
Centralized
Or
distributed?
Performance
Ease of use
Security
(access
control)
Subversion
C
+
+
++
Mercurial
D (Bisect)
+
+
+
Git
D (Bisect)
-
+
15
Document Tools
• Document control
– Sharepoint
– Confluence
• Web content management system
– Drupal (if it’s good enough for Google…)
• Collaboration frameworks
– Hubzero (good access control)
– Google
16
nanoHUB
Screen Image © Network for Computational Nanotechnology
(nanohub.org/groups/ncn).
Risk management
• Hope is not a strategy
• Plan for regional civil / natural
disasters
– Implies geographically
distributed mirroring of data
– If you can’t be back up and
running within 24 hours of
losing your main data center
you don’t really have a plan
• Personnel plans: plan for each
key leader to be incapacitated
and yet have the project continue
successfully
Photo by U.S. Coast Guard, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kyle Niemi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KatrinaNewOrleansFlooded_edit2.jpg
Photo in public domain
18
IU’s cyberinfrastructure
From: http://rtinfo.indiana.edu/ci
19
Technology transfer
• Advance agreement on policies and practice
• What you do with technology transfer must match up
against the promises for economic development
• The financial plan cannot be money goes in for a decade
and comes back starting at the end when economic
development is a goal
• There is no reason to believe that economic benefits can
be protected exclusively by IP agreements and legal
processes (how do Radiohead and other bands make
their money?)
20
FET flagships different than usual financial
plans – this will be a challenge
Graphic by Bradley C. Wheeler. Used under Creative Commons 3.0 unported attribution license
21
People - One of the biggest challenges
(a US view – EU might be different)
• Attracting and retaining the right people to execute our
strategies
• Job searches generally don’t work by themselves
• Hiring people on grants is great; keeping them funded,
and feeling secure, happy, and productive, is hard
• The key asset: the feeling of meaning in one’s work
• Leadership counts
22
License terms
•
Items indicated with a © are under copyright and used here with permission. Such
items may not be reused without permission from the holder of copyright except
where license terms noted on a slide permit reuse.
•
Please cite this presentation as: Stewart, C.A. 2011. “Management and
organizational structure of large scale innovative projects.” Presentation. Presented
at FLEET Working Group Meeting, 19 July, 2011, Vienna, Austria. Available from:
http://hdl.handle.net/2022/13403
•
Portions of this document that originated from sources outside IU are shown here and
used by permission or under licenses indicated within this document.
•
Except where otherwise noted, the contents of this presentation are copyright 2011
by the Trustees of Indiana University. This content is released under the Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). This license includes the following
terms: You are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work and to remix
– to adapt the work under the following conditions: attribution – you must attribute the
work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that
suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or
distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.
23
Thank you!
• Questions and discussion?
24