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In the systems development, the “one size fits all” methodology doesn’t apply to every project. IT organizations expect project managers to follow a standard set of project and systems development lifecycle processes to deliver projects on time and within budget.
The number of SDLC processes required for a new system implementation is significantly different from the number of processes required to deploy an enhancement release. The amount of SDLC process for bug fixes is different from new enhancements. From an infrastructure perspective, infrastructure consolidation projects adopting virtualization technologies are different from in-house application development processes.
Mature methodologies recognize these differences and adept project managers tailor and customize SDLC processes to the scope of the project or program. Tactically, the SDLC is often customized by identifying the inventory of tasks and process deliverables that will be removed or customized to fit the scope of the project. This is often done using a MS-Excel or MS-Word document to identify all the processes and tasks that are included or excluded in the project tailoring.
A summary of tailoring decisions are presented and signed off by the senior manager, PMO or process quality assurance analyst. The tailored processes and deliverables are then incorporated in the project schedule. The end result is a project schedule that represents the tailored methodology and includes the critical work products and the supporting SDLC deliverables.
The administrative burden in the tailoring process is reviewing the complete inventory of processes to determine which apply and documenting the customizations. The administrative task is necessary, but it is time consuming. Some organizations will provide an inventory of all their processes and project deliverables in a single Excel document or a website. These process and deliverable inventories can become cumbersome to manage.
A SDLC with 25 key processes across a standard waterfall methodology can include five to 10 individual activities for each process. Each of these activities may include their own subset of five to 10 steps to complete the activity. Each of these processes, activities or steps may have different project deliverables as outputs of the processes. In this example, the project manager could possibly evaluate over 2,000 processes, activities and steps to tailor a methodology.
Supporting project tailoring with an inventory of processes and deliverables is a useful first step in customizing an SDLC for a specific project. A natural IT evolution of the tailoring concept is to build tools to help automate the decision-making process. An effective tailoring tool would provide the following features:
Provide a set of project questions used to tailor and generate a customized set of SDLC processes that are applicable to the project Enable the project manager to include or exclude processes for further tailoring Document the reasons why processes and deliverables were customized Generate the a project tailoring summary report Generate the MS-Project schedule based on the project tailoring
By providing a tool to support project tailoring, project managers can quickly generate a list of SDLC processes specific to the project and further tailor a methodology specific to a project’s unique characteristics.
It is important to recognize that every project isn’t always customized. SDLC processes the product of thoughtful process analysis and design. However, the organization’s methodology team should monitor project tailoring requests and determine why the existing SDLC needed to be tailored. Project managers can recommend the tailoring; however, the PMO should approve final tailoring to verify the SDLC processes should be customized.
Automation isn’t a pipeline dream to project tailoring nirvana. I’ve seen several organizations where the SDLC methodology team produces a tailoring tool to help project managers customize the SDLC to fit their project requirements. Some of the tools are developed with macro-driven spreadsheets or MS-Access databases. Other tools are supported with dynamic website applications that generate process asset libraries depending on the tailoring question responses.
Project tailoring is an acceptable approach to customize a methodology to a variety of projects within an IT organization. Analyzing and tailoring a methodology is a time-consuming process. By implementing a project tailoring tool, the project manager can focus on the key SDLC activities that are applicable to the project. Stay tuned to this column for future example of a tactical project tailoring tool.
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