In my previous post for project managers working on mainframe upgrade projects, I recommended that you have your vendor (IBM, Mainline Information Systems, etc.) provide you with a list of your current mainframe configuration and the proposed mainframe configuration so you can:

• Review the current and the new configurations for accuracy
• Question any apparent discrepancies
• See what features are being “carried forward” to the new mainframe and verify that they should be carried forward and that the required quantities are correct
• See what features are not being “carried forward” and verify that this is part of the plan, not an omission
• See what new features have been added (i.e., features on the proposed mainframe that are not part of the current mainframe)

The next step I suggest is to check on (or review again) possible price changes for your software.  IBM or Mainline can provide you with an estimate of your IBM software charges on the new machine.  This is done using a tool called the Workload Pricer (WLP).

The best approach is to have your vendor pull the latest software inventory for your machine and input the data into WLP.  Then, your vendor will model that software against your current machine.  The results should match what you are paying today.  It’s important to get this step right, because you are creating a baseline against which to compare other options.

Once the baseline is right, then the vendor can add a new machine to the model and tell WLP to estimate software costs on that machine.  (You can also model various hardware alternatives that way, too, which probably has already been done during the marketing phase).

Three key things to keep in mind:

1. You will have some products that carry a monthly license charge (usually called “mlc” products).
2. You may have some products that have a one time charge (OTC) plus an annual subscription and service charge (S&S).
3. You may have third party products that will also be affected by an upgrade.

The WLP model will estimate your IBM MLC and OTC/S&S charges for the new mainframe.  It will not estimate third party prices; you will need to contact those vendors directly.

From a PM standpoint, you mainly want to know that you have a complete list of the software products running on the machine and that potential price changes have been explored.

One of the great things about an IBM mainframe upgrade is the “technology dividend” which basically says that a new machine of comparable power will have lower maintenance and software costs than the machine it is replacing.  Combined with a year’s warranty on the new machine, these dollar savings go a long way toward financially justifying the purchase of the most current technology.

Quick recap – at this point:

• You know all of the hardware features on your current and proposed machines and you’ve reviewed them for accuracy
• You know all of the software running on your current machine, along with price estimates for how the upgrade may increase or decrease your software costs

The key is risk mitigation – avoid any surprises.

Don Appleby has served since 2004 as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he teaches in the Information Engineering and Management Program. He has over three decades of professional experience in the information technology industry. Prof. Appleby is retired from IBM.Thanks to ProfAppleby.com for this article.

Wow, how long has it been since I’ve encountered an area of scientific research and thought “that would be really cool to work on!”  But this article on computational linguistics really captured my imagination.

I was beginning to wonder if I even still had an imagination.

Check this out:

“Traditionally, decipherment has been viewed as a sort of scholarly detective game, and computers weren’t thought to be of much use,” Barzilay said. “Our aim is to bring to bear the full power of modern machine learning and statistics to this problem.” – extracted from the article below at www.mnn.com:

Here is a link to the complete article

Don Appleby has served since 2004 as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he teaches in the Information Engineering and Management Program. He has over three decades of professional experience in the information technology industry. Prof. Appleby is retired from IBM.Thanks to ProfAppleby.com for this article.

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So hindsight is 20/20 and the point is not whether I could have predicted this situation and put an appropriate mitigation strategy in place. But what if I were the person responsible for working on this team in the Gulf and this disaster happened all of a sudden? I would now have one of the largest scope additions ever. How would I proceed? Well, when you are losing two hundred thousand gallons of oil a day you have to act fast. I would probably want to establish a command center where I could have joint operations with various government agencies, industry partners, and volunteers (staffed around the clock). With such a complicated problem to solve I would immediately need to identify the world’s leading experts and get them on my team, the human resource plan would be very important. Another key aspect of planning for this situation would be an amazing communications plan. The coordination amongst such a large team alone would be mind boggling, but the need to get information to the public about our progress would be essential.

What would you do if you were the project manager in this situation? Would you rise to the occasion and do all that you could to help the situation? Would you give up, change your name, get plastic surgery, and move to another country? Let’s hope that we never find ourselves in this type of situation.

Seriously I wish the best to all of those involved in the cleanup effort. I hope that they can act fast and apply strong project management in order to minimize the impact to our precious environment.

Lulu.com’s description calls it:

“A quick start, novice users guide to the very basics of backing up home computers. Please get started backing up your home data. This will help you get started.”

To learn more or to purchase Todd’s book, click here.

I woke up thinking about penguins, so there must be something more I need to say.  Here goes.

Some of us are naturally negative in our outlooks.  I believe we’re just wired that way.  I have told people, in years past, that I have a superpower – the ability to see why a project is going to fail.  It’s a gift, like a sixth sense.

Some of the very best technicians I know are like this – they can take in all the intricacies of a complicated, risky plan in a heartbeat and then tell you why you’re doomed.  It’s like something out of Blink.

That can be a helpful skill to have.  People start coming to you to let you “look over” things and to get your feedback.  When it comes to “adding value,” there’s nothing quite as spectacular as helping the team dodge a bullet.

But if all I ever did was go around telling people why things were going to fail, I wouldn’t be a very fun guy to be around.  Agreed?  I’d be like a bomb-sniffing dog who never turns it off to go play frisbee.

So, some of us are just that way – our mind is just always tuned into “what’s wrong” mode.  Your brain gets stuck in this loop:

1. That’s not true.
2. That’s not right.
3. I disagree.
4. This is a waste.

And you know what?  You might even be right about everything.  Seriously.  But you will never be able to access the creative, innovative part of your brain if your stuck in “what’s wrong” mode.

So, when you read my (silly) penguin problem, did you immediately go into “what’s wrong” mode?  If so, do you want to learn how to get out of it?  We’ll consider this problem in a future post.

Now, go play frisbee.

Don Appleby has served since 2004 as an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he teaches in the Information Engineering and Management Program.  He has over three decades of professional experience in the information technology industry.  Prof. Appleby is retired from IBM.Thanks to ProfAppleby.com for this article.

We are all aware of the Project Management Institute’s five process groups; initiating planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Did you know that Agile Project Management has five process groups as well? According to Jim Highsmith it does; envision, speculate, explore, adapt, and close. The first thing that you will notice about Highsmith’s list is the flavor of the words. They have the feeling of an adventurer about to setoff on a new and exciting journey. The traditional project management list seems almost clinical in a way. By comparing and contrasting each process group we can gain further insight into the inner workings of each methodology.

Initiating vs. Envision – When we initiate in traditional project management we immediately begin work down a known path. There is a set set of steps that we follow every time. True to the flavor of agile with envisioning we are brainstorming with our customers about what they want us to build. The output of the initiating phase is a project charter and the output of the envision phase is a vision statement.

Planning vs. Speculate – Similar to initiating, with planning, we have a known set of steps to create a project plan. While the subject matter we are planning changes from project to project with traditional project management we typically use the same tools and techniques. For instance we start with a work breakdown structure, create an activity list, and then create our schedule. With agile we speculate on a possible approach to implementing the projects vision. In agile’s planning phase we create feature cards and hold a time boxed meeting before the start of every sprint to prioritize them.

Executing vs. Explore – In a traditionally managed project when we get to the executing phase our scope, budget, and schedule are all set and baselined. From day to day we track precisely against the project schedule, calculating earned value along the way. In agile we work with the overall vision and our set of feature cards to complete a sprint. The actual activities for the sprint are set, however the order has yet to be determined. We measure progress back calculating a daily burn down and project velocity.

Monitor and Control vs. Adapt – When we monitor and control, we are looking to preserve our original baseline at all cost. Traditional project management expects the plan to be perfect and that we can predict everything we need to do before we get started working on it. Agile on the other hand plans for change and realizes that sometimes we have to adapt in order to preserve the project. For instance, if at the end of that sprint the solution either doesn’t work or doesn’t meet the customer’s needs we start over. While this delay could impact the overall project schedule, thus violating the “iron triangle”, you always have the option to reduce scope later on.

Closing vs. close – Nothing new here, agile projects share most of the same characteristics as traditional projects when it comes to project closeout. The primary difference at this stage of the game is the name of the lessons learned meeting, agile calls it a retrospective.

Brian Rabon is a contributing writer for the IEM Blog. Mr. Rabon is an Adjunct Instructor and the newsletter editor for the IEM Program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Mr. Rabon teaches EE606 :Technical Project Management as well as EE 615: Business Process Modeling to clients of the IEM Program. Thanks to http://blog.yourpmpartner.com for this article.