Different Flavors Of PPMs

-S.Sugavaneswaran
Sonata Software Ltd.
 Different Flavors of PPMs
Presented at HMBP 2010

S.Sugavaneswaran
Sonata Software Limited
21-May-10

www.sonata-software.com
 Agenda

• About Process Performance Models

• High maturity enablers

• Challenges faced in implementation

• Flavors of PPM
• How good they are

3
 Need for PPM

Adapted
from the SEI
paper “An
Executive
Tutorial of
CMMI
Process
Performance
Models”

• An Earned Value Management dashboard

• How effective is such a report in terms of triggering
process improvement actions?
• Will it help to know which controllable process
factors influence the above outcomes?
4
 Process Performance Models

“Delighting customers is what it’s all about, and that comes from
consistent, end-to-end process performance.” – Kevin Weiss

• Relate controllable factors to an outcome

o Y=f(x1,x2,x3…)
• Developed from historical data
• Predict results achieved by following a process
• With a known confidence level

• Help perform “What-if” analysis

• Compose processes for a project
5
 Our Context

• IT Consulting and Services company

• Customers across US, Europe, Middle East and APAC
• Services offered
• Product Engineering Services
• Application Development/ Management
• Managed Testing
• Infrastructure Management
• Quality standards adaptation
• ISO 9001
• CMM Level 5
• CMMI v1.2 Level 3
• ISO 20000-1
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 High Maturity Enablers

• Standardizing size measures for projects

• To normalize process performance

• Enabling sub-process level control

• Effort to create, review and rework

• Options for each sub-process

• Data at the sub-process option level

• Capturing defect injection and detection

7
 Implementation Challenges

“The truth is that you always know the right thing to do. The
hard part is really doing it.” – H. Norman Schwarzkopf

• Stakeholder buy-in

• Issues with data availability / stability

• Tool enablement constraints

• Continued involvement of practitioners

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 PPM – Healthy Ingredients

1. Statistical or probabilistic in nature

2. Predict interim and/or final project outcomes
3. Use controllable factors tied to sub-processes
4. Model the variation of predictive factors to forecast
outcome variations
5. “What-if” analysis for project planning/re-planning
6. Connect upstream with downstream activities
7. Enable mid-course corrections

9
 PPM Flavors

“All models are wrong, some are useful!” – George Box

• Development project – Continuous simulation

• Sub-process wise process performance
• Prediction with confidence levels
• “What-if” analysis

• Production support – Discrete event simulation

• Process flow depiction and simulation
• Analysis of
• SLA adherence
• Resource utilization
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 Flavor 1

• About the project

• New development (Agile)
• Sprints & stories
• Sprint content decided based on experience
• Developers categorized by skill level

• Model applied
• Monte Carlo Simulation

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 Simulation Highlights

• Objective: To optimize number of stories forming

part of a sprint
• Predictive factors
• Working hours per day
• Number of stories
• Sub-process wise productivity
• Skill levels
• Size of each story
• Team size

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 The Model

• Inputs: Estimated story size and sub-process

productivity distributions
• In each simulation run,
• The model chooses values from sub-process
productivity distributions, arrives at effort
• Predicted effort = Sum of all sub-process efforts
• Effort computed is divided by the available man-hours
per day, giving the elapsed days
• Over time, a profile is built showing the distribution
of likely outcomes (number of days)
• Confidence level indicated for the output
13
 Scenarios

Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story Story
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Size 30 12 80 2 6
Skill High High High Low High
Understanding &
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Analysis
Design 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Design Review 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Coding 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Code Review 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Code Fix 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Unit Test 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Units Test Fix 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

FIT Testing 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

IT Fix 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Table 1: Model before running the simulation

14
 Sample Predictions

Scenario 1: Stories
1,2,3,4,5 and 6

Tool Output 1: Release Prediction – 6 Stories

Scenario 2: Stories
1,2,3,5 and 6

Tool Output 2: Release Prediction – 5 Stories

15
 Process Control

Sub-processes to be
closely monitored:
IT and Coding- High
skill

Tool Output 3: Sensitivity-Release Prediction

16
 Flavor 2

• About the project

• Production Support
• High volume, short turnaround work
• SLA-driven
• Different ticket priorities
• Three different skill sets

• Model applied
• Discrete Event Simulation

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 Simulation Highlights

• Objectives: To forecast and manage SLA

adherence and Resource utilization

• Predictive factors
• Team size
• Response, analysis and development time
• Arrival pattern of tickets (by priority)
• Wait times

18
The Process Model

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 SLA Adherence

Tool Output 4: SLA Miss before the model

Tool Output 5: SLA Miss after the model

Probability of SLA breach brought down

 Resource Utilization

Tool Output 6: Before

the model

Tool Output 7: After

the model

Resource utilization improved as well

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 Model Flavors vs Healthy
Ingredients

Ingredient Flavor 1 Flavor 2

Statistical, probabilistic… Yes Yes

Predict interim/ final… Yes Yes
Sub-process level factors Yes Yes
Model uncertainty… Yes Yes
Support “What-if” Yes Yes
analysis
Connect to downstream.. Yes Yes
Enable course correction Yes Yes
Table 2: Models vs Healthy Ingredients 22
 Conclusion

“Action may not always bring happiness, but

there is no happiness without action.”
- Benjamin Disraeli

23
 Thank you
Q&A
Email: sesh@sonata-software.com
www.sonata-software.com

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