PLASMAPLAN™ - THE FIRST OEM APPLICATION
About PlasmaPlan™
PlasmaPLAN™ is a PlasmaMIND Application™ specifically developed to add value and manage risk in the delivery of commercial projects. It utilises PlasmaMIND™’s High Definition Inferential Capability through the PlasmaMIND™ Thought Engine™ and it leverages a number of PlasmaMIND™ Metaphoric Models including the FloorPlan Model, the Flight Plan Model, the White-Water Rafting Model, the Sphere of Influence Model and the Degrees of Separation Model to derive a complex RealWorldObject space for strategic, tactical and operational management.
This ensures a cohesive and complete coverage of all aspects guiding the delivery of a project from inception to execution to production to business value realisation.
The Metaphoric Models Used in PlasmaPlan™
Metaphoric Models were designed and is used as part of the PlasmaPLAN™ Application as a basic delivery approach which helps us not only to better manage but also to better upward communicate project progress and exceptions, fixing the “Lost in Translation” issue as it where.
Floorplans
One such methodology/approach is to deliver a project in line with the analogy of building a house (or a building a corporate building as some of our clients often insists). The first step being the inspiration of the architecture/blueprint. The architect defines the boundaries of the house, i.e. The number of rooms, room size, environment, placing and the flow expected within the house.
Room-by-Room Approach
The engineer together with the builders will tackle building the house room by room. Making sure to finish the room completely before moving on to the next room. Completing the room to the extent that the new house owner is in the position to live in this completed room even though the other rooms may not yet have been built. It is important for the engineer to ensure that the rooms are built in a logical sequence of dependency and flow. During the construction of each room, the logistics regarding the flow within that room, the light fittings, plugs, plumbing etc, will be taken into consideration whilst keeping it in context with the rest of the house’s overall design.
Objective:
Chop the risk into manageable chunks - Room < 2 week duration
Each Room represents a USABLE BUSINESS VALUE CAPABILITY
Deliver business value FREQUENTLY
Scoped Business Capabilities
Similar to the functional areas in a house, a Business Capability is an expression and representation of what business does and has an ability to do. In the context of a project, this represents the CAPABILITIES the project is committed to either build, extend on, or support.
The PlasmaPLAN™ represents business capabilities in the same manner by a combination of rooms and grouping of rooms into Wings, forming business capabilities and sub-capabilities.
In the house blueprint representation to the right, each room provides for a functional policy of use/capability. I.e. Kitchen provides the ability to cook, the Lounge, the ability to watch television, the Patio, the ability to be outside. Together however they represents a new capability, the ability to Entertain/Host a party.
PlasmaPLAN™ Layered View
PlasmaPLAN™s are an extension of the Room-by-Room approach and allows for a full project/programme depiction. In order to provide a multifaceted view of a project/programme, PlasmaPLAN™s use a multi-layered depiction of a project, similar to a multi story building.
PlasmaMind ValuePlan Pack™
Every project/programme should be driven by a justification on the basis of its expected commercial benefit. The Value plan layer is an alignment to the business case drivers and how it relates to the specific business deliverables and capabilities to be developed during the initiative.
PlasmaMind FlightPlan Pack™
The aviation industry understands the relationship between Risk and Reward.
Weighing up the benefits of flying in a straight line towards the intended destination while at the same time weighing up the risk involved when flying too close to a storm along the way. Furthermore, careful planning is required around departure times and consideration for the dependencies of a landing window at the destination.
Projects require the similar Risk and Reward consideration when navigating dependencies. Choosing a path close enough to risk, i.e. starting design on an unconfirmed requirement, while understanding the need to land the project on time and within budget.
Accelerators™
PlasmaPLAN™s provide for a great ability to identify areas in a project which can be accelerated as a factor of its importance, criticality, and ‘multiplier’ re-use across a project.
Accelerators are identified when deliverables contribute to the business capabilities for a project across multiple rooms. Delivering the said deliverable in one room, may mean a complete/partial reuse of the same deliverable in another room.
PlasmaPLAN™ Concepts Defined
A ROOM
A grouping of project deliverables that represents business capabilities or sub-capabilities.
Room - Representation of business capability/sub-capability to be built as part of a project/program.
Pillar - Representation of the focus areas within a room. A pillar serves as a container for grouped deliverables. One could for instance provision for IT and Business deliverables into separate pillars required within the same room to represent a true Business Capability.
Sliver - A logical sub grouping of deliverables within a pillar, i.e. a single integration to be build consisting of multiple deliverables.
Deliverables - The tangible building blocks of a room. i.e Requirements document, code,training document, test pack, etc. Tracking the progress of a deliverable is done on based on a state.
Wing - A grouping of rooms that represents business capabilities and sub-capabilities
2. Solidity Model
As we believe that all deliverables should be tangible in nature, (SOLID) PlasmaPlan uses a solidness model to determine the progress of a deliverables as it transitions through states of solidness, from Vapour being least tangible to Concrete which is considered the most solid.
The colours in the table below is used on the PlasmaPlan to indicate the relevant STATE of the deliverable, and is used in PROGRESS calculations.
3. Communication Sphere
At the start of each project a project Communications Sphere is drafted to clearly articulate the stakeholders of the project, their proximity to the project, the medium by which project communication will be provided to them as well as the frequency for the communication. The Pen Model is used to articulate each stakeholder’s role during the project.
4. Swimmer model
The SWIMMER MODEL provides a new lingo to be used for a team leader to communicate when he/she provides feedback. It is a mental model as it explains RedScreen’s heuristic thought process for ownership, escalations and more importantly mandate in everyday life of operations.
As a metaphoric model it uses a common popular metaphor, that of white water rafting with inflatable boats down a series of rapids. Whitewater rafting is actually all about safety while enjoying a potentially risky experience.
A “swimmer” is a crew member that falls overboard during the ride. The team has to determine immediately if they are in a position to rescue the crew member themselves without risking the boat. As fallback they leave the rescue up to the support team.
Classifying the overboard crew member as a “short swimmer” means that he/she is within reach of the boat and can be saved by the other crew members.
A “long swimmer” is out of reach and needs rescue by the support team in kayaks following the boat.
A “drowner” is has drifted out of view of even the kayak support team and hence needs a higher intervention from staff next to the river to deploy a rescue.
In this metaphoric model, the swimmers represent issues/risks within a project.
5. Pen model
This model is used to assist in identifying ROLES and ASSIGNMENTS of cross functional responsibilities to a project deliverable or activity.
Used in conjunctions with with the Communication Sphere to clearly articulate the stakeholders of the project and their Ownership of project deliverables.
Classifications of the model from Blue Pen (Creator of Content) to Purple Pen (Review by MD) is set out in the image to the right.
Governance - Weekly Rhythm
Weekly Project Rhythm
The project execution is governed, tracked and driven by a number of weekly rhythm activities and resulting artefacts. These are done to ensure compliance to the PMO (Project Management Office) which our Master Services Agreements with our clients require from us.
The What - The Floorplan provides scoped business capabilities, business case tracking, accelerators, dependencies, priorities, status and overall execution flow and a visual representation of the of current state of the project. The Floorplan is updated once a week and used on Steerco level for an overall project progress view.
The When - The Project Execution Plan adds the timeline aspect to the project and is tracked at Room-level. The project’s weekly tracking is anchored by this plan and allows the team to zoom into the specific weekly deliverables expected of the team for that week. The weekly activities include daily standup meetings (stickies board), Weekly Dock & Rock, Weekly Status meetings, and weekly deliverable showcase sessions. These are described in more detail below:
The Daily Meeting - The daily stand-up meeting has the objective of focussing the combined team (RedScreen and Client) on the daily tasks associated with the deliverables in execution. The tasks are tracked by means of a stickies board.
Weekly Status Meeting - The weekly status meeting provides for a formal setting for the Client Project Manager and RedScreen to discuss the project status, associated budget usage and to address risks and issues.
Weekly Deliverable ShowCase Session - Weekly showcase sessions are scheduled between the RedScreen delivery lead and the Client interfaces team lead. The purpose of the session is for the RedScreen delivery lead to showcase the deliverables completed during that week and encourage functional testing of said deliverables with the Client team.
Weekly Dock & Rock - The weekly Dock & Rock process is RedScreen’s weekly project governance event. Once a week, the project Delivery Lead is required to present the project status, execution plan, risks, issues and other project specific artefacts to a RedScreen Director for validation and mentorship.