The wheel turns, Deming here we are!

The Management of Pentalog has voted on February 27 several major trends for the evolution of its quality management system for 2009:- Implementation of a multi-year training course for current and future project managers,- Improvement of project processes by incorporating methodologies from the CMMI and ITIL repositories and by generalizing the use of fine metrics in project management,- Development of tools for capitalization and knowledge sharing within Pentalog.The training course for PM will comprise several stages:- A basic 6-day course, developed in three times over two days, and meant to strengthen the basic knowledge on project management, especially planning, expense management, risk management, team management and customer management;- Supplementary half-day or full-day modules meant to explore these general notions through more and more precise exercises, and delivered within 2 years following the basic course.Four groups have already been identified, and the 1st session will take place with a pilot group (Molodovan Project leaders and managers) by the end of April, for completion by end of June 2009. Other sessions (Romanian and Vietnamese project managers) will follow a few weeks apart.This training is a totally new effort in the history of Pentalog, since it involves in 2009, more than 40 people, or 240 days of training, and a training time of approximately 30 days. A training meant to strengthen our management and project monitoring capabilities, all the more indispensable that we may think that in this crisis period – for an indefinite period – only the best companies will manage to extricate themselves.In parallel to this training plan, the project processes in our repository and our project management will be drawn up, thanks to a major work on design traceability (specifications related to development), risk management, tests and measures for project performance (CMMI, metric).The fine decomposition of the time spent on development, but also on design and testing, in basic work units, specific to every technology project and skill level, will allow the adjustment of the ETC and the optimization of task planning in order to better control productivity and efficiency: more relevant and timely estimates, better compliance with the milestones, stricter control over differences, measurement of objectives achievement.These metrics and the different project assessments that we have begun to implement, will also be used to build a database containing estimations, final data, statistics on errors, best practices and examples of what not to do, in order to capitalize our experience and improve our practices at all times. These data will directly benefit our customers in the context of estimates and Pilot projects.The implementation of metrics has already begun in several large projects and will expand to all projects by the end of the first semester of 2009. The improvement of production processes is, in turn, planned for April-June 2009.