Unlock the full potential of project management with Mounir Ajam's expert insights on the Uruk platform in our latest podcast. With over three decades of experience, Mounir delves into the transformative power of aligning project management with business operations, revealing how to tear down silos and tailor project approaches with finesse. Get ready to decode the trifecta of project success — people, tools, and process — and understand why the Uruk platform is poised to redefine digital value delivery. Whether it's enhancing speed to market or adhering to your budget, Mounir’s wisdom on sustainable project foundations and the strategic leverage of a stage gate life cycle model is an unmissable masterclass for anyone looking to excel in project management.
Dive deeper into the world of efficient project navigation with Mounir’s guidance on managing project life cycles and stage gates on the Uruk platform. Learn how to employ simplified or advanced modules to address the varying complexities of your projects, and how the platform's evolutionary approach can boost your organization's project management maturity. Get to grips with the flexibility of the Uruk platform's registration and exploration options, and how its risk-free trial plans are designed to fit both individual and organizational needs. Join us as we explore these robust modules and future enhancements destined to revolutionize project management, all shared by the seasoned expertise of Mounir Ajam.
Explore more project management insights at www.urukpm.com
Unlock the full potential of project management with Mounir Ajam's expert insights on the Uruk platform in our latest podcast. With over three decades of experience, Mounir delves into the transformative power of aligning project management with business operations, revealing how to tear down silos and tailor project approaches with finesse. Get ready to decode the trifecta of project success — people, tools, and process — and understand why the Uruk platform is poised to redefine digital value delivery. Whether it's enhancing speed to market or adhering to your budget, Mounir’s wisdom on sustainable project foundations and the strategic leverage of a stage gate life cycle model is an unmissable masterclass for anyone looking to excel in project management.
Dive deeper into the world of efficient project navigation with Mounir’s guidance on managing project life cycles and stage gates on the Uruk platform. Learn how to employ simplified or advanced modules to address the varying complexities of your projects, and how the platform's evolutionary approach can boost your organization's project management maturity. Get to grips with the flexibility of the Uruk platform's registration and exploration options, and how its risk-free trial plans are designed to fit both individual and organizational needs. Join us as we explore these robust modules and future enhancements destined to revolutionize project management, all shared by the seasoned expertise of Mounir Ajam.
Explore more project management insights at www.urukpm.com
Good day, howdy, and welcome to the 4pm podcast. My name is Munir Ajam. My core passion is project management in community. I come to you with at least close to 35 years of experience. My eagerness to share knowledge and to mentor and coach groups help organizations transform the way they manage project to a higher level. 4pm's tent in this case is shortened for us for what we call value, which means project, program, product and portfolios, so a lot of our topics will be around this 4pm. Let's get going. Good day, my name is Munir Ajam. I am the founder and CEO of the project manager.
Speaker 1:
In this presentation, I will be sharing how do we, or how to manage project on the Rook platform. So we will have a general discussion about the philosophy, the approach, the concept, the mindset that we follow in managing project and what we have implemented inside the Rook platform. So let's get going. First, I'll have a couple of slides on general concept and if you've been following us, you probably heard us talk about these things many times before in many videos and blogs and even broadcasts, and the idea here is that in order, obviously, to manage project, we need to have a well defined, sustainable foundation, and that foundation criteria that we've been using is that we need to integrate project management with the rest of the organization. So, basically, project management is not just about being pure technical work. It has to integrate with the business and the operation and other aspect within an organization, in other words, minimize the effect of silos or even break them if possible. It should cover the entire value delivery lifecycle, project lifecycle. We might use different names. The names we've been using is value delivery. It has to be customizable to fit various domain, domain, vector, sectors Sometime we have different people use different terminology and it has to be adaptable to fit the project type, size, complexity and other variables. These are some of the core principles that we follow for our project management methodology and the approach we use. In the Rook platform. We are publishing another video on the six components of project management methodology. That would be a good video to watch along with this video as well.
Speaker 1:
Finally, in this kind of concept here, what we're saying it has to be built on the three pillars. I think many of us agree on. In order to achieve success in project, we have to have as a foundation at three pillars, people, basically meaning competency, people, competent people, tools and technology and process and method. Obviously, in a technology solution like the Rook platform, it may be, it sounds like it fit under the technology area. However, it's really also include the processes. It's why these two circles here, or two pillars, are green, because the platform is not a tool, it's basically a built-in process with numerous method and, of course, we also touch on the orange area of how can we help people become more competent. Because obviously, with the process and technology, that one factor, the other factor is the knowledge portal and other guy that we are including inside our platform.
Speaker 1:
Second item here we want to highlight is obviously, why, why this approach? What is the value of this approach? Because it's a unique value proposition of Rook project management and Rook platform and here what we are saying is that a collaborative, highly adaptive digital value delivery maybe few words here to describe what we are trying to do so value delivery solution empowers organization to lead their projects from vision to success. Now, obviously this is sound like maybe a just general statement, but it's the benefit of such a value delivery methodological approach. If we look at and we relate that to basically the concept of a project lifecycle stage gate model, there are research that shows that a effective project lifecycle stage gate model can help increase the speed to market of your product development work. It's also give you more than twice more likely to help you achieve budget on time. That is come from stagegatecom. You can visit the site and check for yourself On.
Speaker 1:
On capital project, there may be some good reference there Come from the independent project analysis company, but this information here comes from a specific book called capital project and basically what it's saying is if you follow a proper stage gate lifecycle model, you should achieve better results than you anticipate. So let's say you have anticipation when you launch a project you're going to achieve X value. If you properly and you have an effective system in place, you will achieve X plus. And in that book the result was 5 percent increase on the net present value. And if you don't follow or semi follow, but in general if you don't follow a well-defined process, you could actually, even though your project might still be kind of completed and the product of the project is put in use, you're likely to suffer about 45 percent decrease in your anticipated net present value. This is what reference. Other references could show similar results. So we're done with the general concept.
Speaker 1:
Let's zoom in on the idea of the platform itself. How do we manage product inside the platform? Now I have to state right now this is not a demo. We will be publishing numerous demos on various functionalities and modules of the platform. This is more to understand the principles and the philosophy of how the platform works. So to manage a project sorry. One more clarification this is limited to project management in general. Of course, we have other modules and sections of the platform, such as community of practice, such as administrative portfolio management, program management.
Speaker 1:
The focus here is on the project management element, or how do we manage a project inside the platform. So we look at that as the project management section inside the platform and we break them down into two parts. First, obviously, we have to get the project inside the platform. So that is usually very easy process and they can be accomplished very quickly. So set up a new project in the platform and then, once we have the project set up, then we need to go and, of course, set up and ready. That means we can start to manage an existing project, because that project will be already existing inside the platform.
Speaker 1:
There are two areas. Each one of them have steps. I will cover them next. If we look at the setup of the new project. What are the steps required? Within that section? There are five steps and there could be more in the future, but for the time being there are five steps. Step number one when you click on set up a new project on the platform and when you see a demo, you will be able to see visualize these steps as first you. They will come up form. They will be a form that you have to complete. That's what we call the project profile. Obviously it's a project title, project numbers and any other relevant information in that form. So that's step number one. The output of that step is now we have a project added to the future database in the system, which means, let's say, sometime organization might want to upload into the platform 50 projects from their strategic plan. That's fine. You can do it all as part, step one, step one, step one on all these projects and again, what that does is that project will be included into the future project list, which we used to call the parking lot, but Right now we are using we call it the future, which means the project is not active yet. I so it's only future for consideration and will stay there until step two.
Speaker 1:
Step two is when a project sponsor or senior manager Would go into the system and activate the new project and when that happened they assigned PM. Now notice the footnotes here. In some organization, we understand they may not be a project sponsor role. That is specified and defined. However, someone a manager, a senior manager will still need to go activate the project. Otherwise, every team member can go and start initiating project and managing project on the platform. Who's no god governance or control. There have to be a step of governance. So at least to activate a project, which mean, in a way, activating the project, is authorizing a PM to work on the project. That would require a step where the sponsor Need to do, or a senior manager. Once that's done, the project is handed over to the assigned PM.
Speaker 1:
Notice we need to assign the project manager and the project manager in this case will need to go and select a tailored method. Now there are many ways to select a tailored method. We have what we call a TMS tailored method selection questionnaire in the platform, where you go, where you go and start answering question and Obviously those questions are related to the method that we have already built into the system, if there are some method out there that we have not built into the system. You'll probably not find the criteria for them there. In that case you will find something called the general project. Or we could have in here a project that had or tailored method that we have built for you as a client. You know, when you we onboard a client, we could build a few tailored method for you and they will be in the system. So in this case your project manager will go and will only see your tailor method, the tailor method that we built for you, or they can see only our method, or they can see both. That flexibility is there. So there will be a questionnaire where you know, question by question, and that will open at the end of this questionnaire, that the TMS that will be the system would recommend One, should be one sometime. It might recommend more than one, but it should narrow down the choices to one method that is the best fit for the purpose you just specified. And that is a an easy process. You can go and you can see the recommended method, you can read about it, you can see the project lifecycle and if you don't like it, you can go back. Now, of course, if what you need is very unique. Maybe in that case that would require us to work with you to develop a specific tailored method for you and then add it to the system, so that step number three is selecting a tailor method from what it really exists.
Speaker 1:
Once that's done, then we go to another step and step four and five could be interchangeable. It's basically the four defined the reporting frequency how often do you want to produce report? Now, that's I mean you know, obviously, to actually generate a reporting system. You can do it any date, any time. You don't need any specific time set. However, sometimes you know, when you produce performance short executive dashboard, you might want to agree on a frequency within the organization. The organization could have a policy set for all project or maybe leave it up to every project based on the condition of the project. It's a site, so you could be weekly, to be bi-weekly, monthly or even quarterly, depend on how long is the project. So here you will define that and that's very. This is part of the communication module, but we created a shortcut for it here because that become important. That set basically the criteria for all the performance charts and the executive dashboard for the system. So if you agree on weekly, for example, every Friday. You can. Actually the system should be able to automatically generate many of the report. Some of it might require your actual input. And then, step number five, you link to a schedule.
Speaker 1:
What we are trying to do and we need to do better job in this area Is that for every tailored method we built, we can agree on, develop a template schedule in this case, ms project and basically the reason for those templates is to help you, to help the project manager, minimize the work. So if there are a lot of commencing for example, the life cycle of a project, the stages, right, if all of these are already defined, why do you need to recreate them? We are giving you a schedule and then you can go and modify it. The intent of the schedule is not this is a complete schedule. This is only a template where you can go and modify it, and usually we will have a demo on this specific one. We follow the principle of rolling wave planning, which means you plan every stage as you move forward. Was that done then? Basically, you have this project set up in the system.
Speaker 1:
So next, what happened? Well, you need to manage an existing project and for that, really, there are two major parts, however. We are showing them here as four different sections of the platform that would help in this area, and these are PLC management, stage management, supporting action and performance management. Let's explore each one, for PLC management is basically covering the entire lifecycle the project lifecycle, the product lifecycle, the value delivery lifecycle, whatever you like to call it. For us, it's important to be from vision to operation and even beyond, and in that case, what you see here in the green we have other videos on this topic, so I'm not going to go into detail the green is typically what very common type of lifecycle that we see in the industry. What Rook have done is modify and add energy discover phase and in order to emphasize that as part of the project lifecycle, and then we added the operation readiness and operation, energy operation stages, which you can see in the blue in the bottom part. So this is how we use, with the idea of integrating project management with the business and operation.
Speaker 1:
The intent here, what you see here. This is a standard model. However, the intent is that this screen in the platform, this lifecycle, would depend on the data method selected. On some project, you could have four stages only. In some project you could have maybe 12 stages. In this specific model there are none stages of the stage game. So part of managing project is managing the project lifecycle, which means managing across the stages. That's one part of how we manage project inside the platform, which means we have to go from zero all the way to the end, stage by stage.
Speaker 1:
Which brings us to stage management, stage management in general. Any typical stage again, regardless how many stages you have in the lifecycle, whether you have four or ten, they're a difficult stage there to produce an output which we call stage deliverable. And that's the stage deliverable must go through a stage gate, a decision point. I know some people hate that term and they said, ah, we don't want to use stage gate management. You do, whether you realize it or not. If you have, if you need to make decision on a project along the lifecycle typically that is another way is a decision point at the gate. Again, you can call it whatever you want. However, that's in principle.
Speaker 1:
Now, what's the purpose of the gate? Obviously to verify the stage deliverable has been completed, bear the company standard guideline and expectation. That's part one, and the second part of the question, especially in the early stages is that are the condition of the project still valid? Is the feasibility of the project still valid? Is it still the decision of management to proceed In that case, go or no go? So the stage gate will serve that purpose. So in the early stages, the stage gate have two purpose verifying the work of the previous stage and authorizing the team, the PM, to go on to the next stage, not all the way to the end, only to the next stage. That's the idea of the stage gate. Some people call these kill points In case you want to kill the project. It's here when you want to kill the project. So that's the idea of what happened in every stage.
Speaker 1:
Now, how do we manage every stage? And that is, we have built into a system two different modules. The first one we call it simplified stage management, which is obviously it's related to the process group concept is that you plan the stage. Authorization happened at the previous gate. So you plan the stage, you implement the stage work, you control and manage throughout and then, when you're done, you close. And the advanced stage management this is resemble more like the ISO and PMI process group. However, notice we have six processes here, so which we have to authorize Again. Authorize could disappear if because that automatically linked to the previous stage. However they are. You know we always believe that the stage has to be authorized, even when you know when you have a gate approved, you might have some have some special condition or instruction that the sponsor want to pass on to the PM. That is where what you can do with the authorize, then we plan the management of the stage, we plan the detail of the stage, we go implement, we monitoring control throughout and where we done we close. So these are two modules in the system.
Speaker 1:
Most method will have already these predefined. So if you're working on mostly micro to small project or the early stages of the project, most likely going to see the simplified already built in. If you work on large, complex capital project, you know and you are the engineering stage or the construction stage, most likely going to find the advanced already set for you. However, in some cases we give you a choice when you go on to stage management. You can choose whether you want to use the simplified or advanced. So obviously, simplified is very simple, quite extremely simple, which means you can plan the stage in five minutes, depending, off course, on the stage, or it can be longer, whereas the advanced actually have.
Speaker 1:
Under these six set of processes, there are about 60 steps that need to be completed for these. Now, obviously, not everything need to be completed every in every stage. However, there are many steps to come. So we manage across the stages. We manage every stage. But also, in order to do this, we need to manage what we call the supporting action, pm function. Some of these what PMI call knowledge areas, iso columns. Basically they call them subject area. I think French too, called them scene. There are different things that need to be managed. We need to manage scope, cost schedule.
Speaker 1:
As you can see here, there are many modules that we are either we have built or building inside the platform. Of course, depending on your option, you have the choice of using them all or maybe skipping some of them. That's a decision for organization. Obviously, if a company come to us and said we want to use the RU platform and they're new to project management, they haven't used a lot of project management. One great advantage of the platform is we can gradually build in their maturity, which mean we can start with only managing the lifecycle and then, as they are ready to take on more areas, we can start to help and work with them to get them on board on all these different topics.
Speaker 1:
Now, the difference in the color shading here of this topic is that the light I don't know is not green. I'm not sure what greenish kind of. These are built already in the platform but in very, very basic functionalities and the intent is we're going to replace them all. And the dark green are these that we are built before as simplified basic module and we have already upgraded them and make them quite a bit robust module which maybe eventually down the road each one of these could become an independent tool that we could even sell it as a separate product. So right now what we have is sustainability management has been built, task management, document management, capture, lesson learned. The other areas are still in the simplified module and gradually, almost every week or two, we will be converting one of these into a to become a darker green. So, for example, this team will be working next on issues management, project success, communication management, team management. These are some of the modules that are already in the queue. So in a month or two, those topics that I just mentioned will be darker green as well. The radish one are things that we want to build, but we don't have anything in the system on them yet, but they will be added down the road. The intention is by the end of the year, most of this will be already fully operational. Now, of course, as we said some of this already, even the light, the greenish one they are there. You can actually use them, but they are very basic functionalities.
Speaker 1:
Now the last topic remember in managing, we are using project. We manage across the stages. We manage every stage. We manage supporting action. We also need to monitor in control and verify and check performance. This is an area where probably most executives would like to come into the platform for where it provides a transparent and real-time single source of truth. Maybe that term that might need some explanation, maybe later today, but in general, when we talk about performance management in the platform, usually there are three modules reporting module, where we generate report, in case you want to send somebody a PDF report.
Speaker 1:
Performance chart, where you can go and see the chart. And then an executive dashboard. Now, of course, this will be for project and program. They will be quite similar. What I didn't say. These will also apply. They will be portfolio chart and performance management. But right now in this presentation, I'm focusing on managing a project, so we will not go into the other areas.
Speaker 1:
This is an example of some of the design that will go into the platform. There are different charts. There will be pie chart, there will be donut chart, there will be radials, there will be, of course, column chart, bar chart you name it Depending on the situation and what is the best way of presenting the data. We will show that. I cannot show you the executive dashboard yet. That is the work that actually the team is starting to work on right now. So hopefully by the end of January or February, we will have those updated performance chart and executive dashboard and with this we say thank you.
Speaker 1:
You can always, of course, follow us and register on our website. You can go and explore the platform and if you'd like to have a tailored demo or a one-on-one discussion that is open, honest and non-obligatory discussion, then you can always follow my currently links and schedule a meeting with me Now to explore the platform. You can explore it today as an individual. There are trial plans 30 days trial plan. You can explore as an individual, so which means you go in as a single user or you can explore as an organization. If you'd like two, three people to go explore together, you can create an organizational trial plan and explore. Also, there is the option we have a 60-day money bag guarantee. We can discuss even where we can onboard you on the regular account and there is no risk for you up to 60 days, and so please feel free to reach out. With this, I will end the discussion and wish you success today, tomorrow and always.