Management Truths: Can You Handle It?

Jack says you can't handle the truth. But if you're ready, I highly recommend Stephen Robbins' excellent book, The Truth About Managing People... And Nothing But the Truth.

Robbins has sold over 2 million copies, and I can see why. In plain, simple language, Robbins outlines 63 truths, supported by evidence, stories, and examples. Each truth is only a few pages, so you can open the book up at almost any page and find a gem. The whole book is under 200 pages in a small paperpack format.

The 63 common-sense truths span the areas of hiring, motivation, leadership, communication, team building, conflict management, job design, performance evaluation, coping with change, and managing behavior.

A few good lessons (paraphrased):

1) Productivity usually breeds satisfaction, rather than the other way around.

2) When interviewing, don't go on traits. Instead probe about past behaviors (i.e. "Tell me about a time when you ....")

3) Put people in jobs that match their personalities.

4) Out of all the traits people have, conscientiousness is the most frequent predictor of success.

5) Specific stretch goals produce higher output than generalized goals like "do your best."

6) Not everyone wants to participate in setting their goals. It depends on their nature, ability, time available, and other factors.

7) Judge behaviors, not people.

8) There's something to be said for "looking the part of the leader."

9) Expect the best and people will deliver. Expect the worst, and people won't dissapoint.

10) Experience isn't always a good indicator of success.

11) There's no ideal leadership style. Directive or supportive styles can work in different situations.

12) Teams often create negative synergy. Beware of loafers. Be sure to identify and measure individual efforts as well as team efforts.

13) Honor the work-life balance. Give flexibility and options.

14) Beware of the quick fix. What works for one company or problem doesn't always work for another.

For many more, and further explanations and examples, read the book!

Job Satisfaction: Google Tops

Google tops the Fortune list of best places to work, driven by soft factors, such as employee job satisfaction. ...

... "Two-thirds of a company's score was based on what employees said about attitudes toward management, job satisfaction and camaraderie, and the balance came from company responses regarding demographic makeup, pay and benefits, management philosophy, communications, opportunities, diversity programs and the like. " ...

Via Reuters: Best Places to Work

Influencing People: The Project Manager's Secret Weapon

I recently attended a presentation on self-awareness and influence by Dr. Charles Dwyer, Academic Director of the Aresty Institute’s Leading and Managing People program in the Wharton School. I was so impressed with the presentation that I bought his book, The Shifting Sources of Power and Influence.

This book was a real eye-opener, and a jewel for anyone in project management. In the book, Dwyer states three major challenges we all face:

• Dissonant Value Systems (i.e. people’s conflicting value systems, made even more visible by the advent of the media, internet, etc.)
• Diffused Power (i.e. power being spread around in a matrix fashion, with more and more decentralization and special interest groups, etc.)
• Limited Resources (We all face a limited set of resources, made even more challenging by our lack of a mindset geared towards accepting tradeoffs, or a good mechanism to guide operational priorities)

Sound like any projects you know?

Dwyer goes on to caution that public statements, such as vision, mission, organizational values, etc. may be useful for articulating the values of the leadership or giving people a sense of structure, but do not in themselves change anyone’s value systems. Many leaders assume they can use these statements to change people’s value systems to match organizational values, but this is a myth.

What is needed instead is the ability to influence others by getting them to change their behavior to match your values. To do this, have a clear picture of what you want the unit to look like; set specific, measurable objectives; and insure that people have a way of achieving those objectives.

According to Dwyer, some tried and true methods include asking people for help, offering or implying something in return, or influencing indirectly (i.e. working through someone else who’s in a better position to influence).

Dwyer points out five guidelines for influencing people (I’ve paraphrased them):

1. Insure they have adequate capability (Do they know what to do, have the competence and self-confidence to carry it out?)
2. Address their perception of “Potential Value Satisfaction” (WIIFM or “what’s in it for me”)
3. Address their perception of the probability of value satisfaction (i.e. Do they trust you? You must build trust through visible examples.)
4. Address their perception of cost (Do this by giving them alternatives or a sense of options, and helping them understand the costs and implications.)
5. Address their perception of risk (Try to assume or distribute some of the risk. Don’t ignore it.)

These are the five things everyone weighs in their mind when someone attempts to influence them. In essence, the five elements (four of which are perceptions) make up an equation for behavior. We can influence people’s behavior by addressing this equation (I’ve paraphrased for simplicity):

Behavior=Capability + (Perceived Value * Trust factor) – (Perceived cost and risk)

These are just some of the gems of wisdom in Dwyer's book. He offers reams of memorable examples, often with a humorous style. With 90% of a project manager's job being communication (including influence), I highly recommend Dwyer’s book for project managers, or anyone in a leadership position for that matter.

Right Brain Project Management

I recently re-read Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. I noticed now that it's out on paperback, the subtitle changed from "Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age" to "Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future."

The latter is probably more accessible and gets to the heart of the book. The premise is that with more technical jobs being eliminated due to automation and offshore outsourcing, we're left clinging to the one thing that computers and offshore resources can't replace---the soft skills. It's not that offshore people don't have the capacity to do this, it's just not effective from a remote location.

The books specifically outlines Six Senses that are now required to compete in today's market (I'd add that these were always needed for effectiveness, but now it's a necessity for career survival). The Six Senses we need to build are:

1) Not just function, but DESIGN (the WOW factor)
2) Not just argument, but STORY (i.e. we need to be storytellers to make a good case)
3) Not just focus, but SYMPHONY (i.e. synthesis of complex relationships vs. heads-down analysis)
4) Not just logic, but EMPATHY (incidentally, the key trait in Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence)
5) Not just seriousness, buy PLAY (fun leads to employee satisfaction, which leads to customer satisfaction and profits. Therefore, Fun=$ !)
6) Not just accumulation, but MEANING

FACT (not from the book, but relevant nonetheless): Per a recent management forum of 70 business schools, many of them are requiring less quantitative courses and more leadership courses. Also, a number of organizations are now recruiting design students instead of MBAs.

The key is that the logical, sequential left-brain stuff is still necessary, but we need to compliment it with the more contextual and feeling right-brain skills. With communication being 90% of a project manager's job, I'd say this directly applies to project managers as well.

Below is a link to Pink's book on Amazon...

Amazon.com: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future: Books: Daniel Pink

Customer Satisfaction: Customization through Specialized Ecosystem ...

Specialization and ecosystems are a means to differentiate a product in the marketplace. Stock Toyota Scions are highly customized to meet the customer's requirements through an ecosystem of specialized body shops. In business services, an ecosystem of specialized providers could customize any stock IT product to the customer needs, while the manufacturer (software company) focuses on production. Will the information technology service-oriented architecture enable mass customization in the IT space? ...

... "Customisation, the idea that by a fully connected and interoperable business world it would be possible to deliver exactly what was wanted by connecting the consumer directly through the manufacturing or services ecosystem. " ...

Via CTO Blog: Unavailable Soon or no two are ever the same!

Einstein Project Management Tip #4: Think Value

And so we continue our series on project management tips from Albert Einstein. Here's another...

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."

This sums up perfectly the problem with most projects today. They focus on "success" without fully defining what success means. Project managers and PMOs track schedule and budget metrics. Then, at the end of the project, some capture customer satisfaction, almost as an afterthought.

What really needs to happen is to insure value to the customer, and this usually goes way beyond being on time and on budget. We spoke about the need for clear goals. Surely that's part of it. We also need to deliver in small, frequent iterations to provide the quickest value and get more immediate customer feedback.

Customer satisfaction should be measured and tagged as an index throughout the life of a project, just as Earned Value uses indices to track cost and schedule performance. This allows course correction to be made in areas such as goal clarification, communication, and other areas needed to provide good value.

And when the product has been delivered, be sure that the customer can maximize the benefits of the product through proper training, tips & techniques, next steps, or any other items that will help them get the value expected.

These are the very items I've attempted to address with my Service-Oriented Project Management (SOPM) framework, with its four phases of Understand, Prepare, Iterate, and Transform (UP-IT).

More Einstein tips coming soon...

ITIL Business Case ...

Evergreen offers whitepaper on the business value associated with ITIL implementation, with benefits seen in operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and risk minimization. ...

... "The white paper references a number of data points taken from current research and enterprise IT process improvement case studies consistently documenting a 20-40% reduction in the effort required for ongoing IT operations, powered by the implementation of ITIL process improvements. The same research clearly links ITIL with strategic gains in customer service quality, accuracy and efficiency and IT risk and compliance work. The development of an ITIL strategy is also discussed and an incremental approach is recommended, one which starts with small steps but shows measurable gains quickly. " ...

Evergreen Systems Releases White Paper on Building the Business Case for ITIL ...

ITIL Measurement: Upper Quintile Performance for Local Authority ...

Local authority recognized as a service management Center of Excellence ...

... "The UK Society of IT Management's recent benchmarking survey of more than 200 local authorities ranked Bridgend Council's IT Department in the top 20% of the authorities surveyed. The survey also confirmed a 23% improvement in Bridgend's user satisfaction since the equivalent survey two years before. " ...

ITIL Measurement: Upper Quintile Performance for Local Authority: Via SourceWire: Bridgend County Borough Council is first Datawatch Centre of Excellence and the only one in Wales

PMO Success Story: A.G. Edwards Case Study

There's an excellent article in CIO Magazine this month showing how A.G. Edwards reinvented its PMO to bring their projects to an 88% success rate (from about 50% originally).

Some key lessons:

• They created a 25-step project management high-level framework of just the high level activities common to all projects. They didn't inflict a detailed application development methodology and left the "how" flexible, as long as the "what" was satisfied. At a more detailed level, they used Primavera for project tracking and dashboard metrics.
  
• They provided leadership training to boost the confidence of their PMs
  
• They moved the project managers from the PMO to the functional areas to encourage collaboration and better align the PMs with the business.
  
• They offered project planning services to assist the distributed project managers with using the new framework effectively (allowing them to use the planning tool of their choice, be it Excel, MS/Word, or a whiteboard). The 25 framework touchpoints, however, are common to all projects for cross-project comparison purposes (I assume enabled in Primavera).
  
• They redefined "success" as "projects that deliver business value." This gives customer satisfaction and business value even greater priority than being on-time and on-budget (note: they still improved their schedule and budget statistics anyway).
  
  This is the essence of the new model and bears repeating. The customer defines success. Under this model, it's quite possible to have a project that is late and over-budget and seen as a raving sucess.
  
• They tirelessly met with stakeholders in individual and group settings to offer the benefits and ask for their support. They used a subtle soft-sell approach with the "bad actors."
  
• They first involved the PMs receptive to new ideas as part of a pilot and them used them to "spread the gospel"
  
• They measured success rates and publicized them in quarterly reports to senior management.

These are all powerful and valid ways to make a PMO successful, and are philosophically aligned with the Service Oriented-Project Management (SOPM) model I've been developing. In this case, these changes collectively served to boost IT's credibility at A.G Edwards significantly.

Here's the full article. Don't miss the sidebar "8 Steps for Improving Project Management."

When Failure Is Not an Option - Editorial - CIO

Join the Project Management Revolution; The SOPM Model Takes Shape

OK, I've been fleshing out the Service-Oriented Project Management (SOPM)™ model, and have come up with a more memorable and catchy representation of the four steps, although the actual content is pretty much the same.

The acronym for the four phases is UP-IT (which can symbolize "upping" the level of customer service, saying "up yours" to old ways of doing things, or "upping" the success rates of IT projects---in which case the "it" stands for "IT").

Ready??? Drum roll please......

The four phases are:

• Understand
• Prepare
• Iterate
• Transform

Here's a revision of my previous post on the topic...

1) UNDERSTAND ... Develop an understanding of the problem being addressed, the goals, constraints, the internal environment, the external market, benchmarks, the people and subject matter involved, potential solutions, risks, benefits/justification, and any other knowledge necessary for success. Most of all, understand the customer and what they need to be successful.

2) PREPARE ... After helping the customer obtain approvals if needed, prepare the project organization (resources, roles & responsibilities), operating principles, the infrastructure and tools needed to run the project, organizational alignment, preliminary training needed, communication, and anything else needed for a smooth road ahead.

3) ITERATE... Using the axiom, "Think bold, implement safely," plan, design, build, test and pilot the solution before attempting a full scale implementation. Encourage innovation. Implement in phases to achieve quick wins, earlier benefits, and greater customer satisfaction. Consider iterative prototypes during the design phase. Don't forget additional training needed.

4) TRANSFORM... After each project phase and at the end of the project, evaluate and document lessons learned, customer satisfaction, and benefits achieved (vs expected) for the purpose of transforming yourself and the customer for the better. This includes guiding the customer to help them achieve maximum results with the product or service delivered, and laying the groundwork for their continued success.

Now that I have the framework locked in, I'll complete the model around these four phases. I am absolutely convinced that this model can help increase customer satisfaction and the general success rates of projects.

SOPM; A New Project Management Methodology

Service Oriented Project Management (SOPM) is taking shape as a methodology that fills the gaps in traditional project management, namely a RELENTLESS customer focus and the all-important analysis and benefits evaluation after the project has "completed."

As I fine tune the model, I'll post the iterations here, as a methodology in progress.

The four high-level steps in SOPM are as follows:

1) UNDERSTAND ... Develop an understanding of the problem being addressed, the goals, constraints, the internal environment, the external market, benchmarks, the people and subject matter involved, potential solutions, risks, benefits/justification, and any other knowledge necessary for success. Most of all, understand the customer.

2) ENABLE ... After helping the customer obtain approvals, prepare the project organization (resources, roles & responsibilities), operating principles, the infrastructure and tools needed to run the project, organizational alignment, preliminary training needed, communication, and anything else needed for a smooth road ahead.

3) ITERATE... Plan, design, build, test and pilot the solution before attempting a full scale implementation. Implement in phases to achieve quick wins, earlier benefits, and greater customer satisfaction. Consider iterative prototypes during the design phase. Don't forget additional training needed.

4) EVALUATE... After each project phase and at the end of the project, evaluate and document lessons learned, customer satisfaction, and benefits achieved (vs expected). This includes evaluating how the customer can achieve maximum results with the product of the project, and laying the groundwork for their continued success.

By using an UNDERSTAND, ENABLE, ITERATE, and EVALUATE process, with COMMUNICATE as an overarching activity that extends across all four steps, we adopt a much more holistic and customer-centered approach to project management.

A few key points... Customer satisfaction should be measured at milestones throughout the project, not just at the end. It's as important as monitoring cost and schedule (i.e. Earned Value performance).

Imagine seeing an S-Curve showing Planned Value, Earned Value, Actual Cost, and Customer Satisfaction. Maybe your project is on schedule and on budget, but the customer isn't satisfied with the results (or with the project communication, or a whole host of other issues).

A narrow focus on cost and schedule takes too much of an inward view. Besides, measuring customer satisfaction throughout a project allows for corrective action instead of managing in the rear view mirror.

More to come.

NOTE: I have since revised this model. See my updated entry.

PMOs; Where's the Value?

A contributor to eProject's eLounge mentioned this excellent article from Chief Project Officer. It's written by Tom Westcott, founder of Project Solutions Group. Several years ago, I saw him speak on scheduling techniques at the PMI Delaware Valley Chapter's Annual Workshop, and was very impressed with his dynamic style and pragmatic approach.

In the article, Westcott talks about how PMOs must demonstrate value if they are to survive, and offers some good tips on how to do just that. Specifically, he says they must create strategic alignment, deliver real value, and communicate frequently.

Here's an excerpt on what he has to say about delivering value:

PMOs must deliver value to survive. Value is not templates, tools, methodology, processes, training; these are means to driving value. Value is gaining efficiencies, achieving cost savings, increasing customer satisfaction, reducing time-to-market, increasing revenue and profit, reducing deficits, or increasing competitive advantage. Too many PMOs wrap their whole mission and existence around the services they provide instead of their impact on the business. Executives buy value.

Too many PMO directors are former project managers who see their role as project management evangelists. This
leads to a myopic view, and often they are ill-prepared or unable to work strategically with executive management. PMO directors need to speak and think in business terms, financial and organizational. Nix the "project-management speak." How does this project benefit the organization and support our strategy? And how can we get it done as quickly and inexpensively as possible? That's what they care about.

For the full article, read on...

Chief Project Officer: PMO or Bust?

Fighting the Status Quo; A Lesson from an Education Reformer

Reading Dennis Littky's The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business has been very inspiring. Just as Littky challenges the status quo in the education system, we must do so in our organizations.

Here's a quote I especially like in the book:

"No matter how far you have gone on a wrong road, turn back"
- Turkish Proverb

I've listed 21 key points, paraphrased from the book, to illustrate how the same issues that face the education system apply to creating a learning environment in business...

1. Teach how to think flexibly, not that there's a right way and a wrong way for doing everything. It's worth noting that the best tennis players hold the racket the wrong way.
2. Create an environment that allows students the freedom to find themselves with the support and motivation of inspiring adults [leaders]
3. Teach students to fish; don't give them fish. Quote: "We have plenty of people who can teach what they know, but very few who can teach their own capacity to learn" - Joseph Hart
4. Use collaborative learning - i.e. "What do we think of this passage as compared to this one?" etc.
5. Teaching and learning are about problem solving. Put teachers and learners in the best possible environment for them to do this together.
6. Don't dismiss someone as "dumb in math" or "uninterested in science." Cater to their strengths [as Peter Drucker says, "Make weaknesses irrelevant" and pair people with complementary strengths if need be]
7. Don't measure education [or any kind of success] by the number of minutes a kid sits at a desk.
8. Remember the Three R's: Relationships (with teachers, community, parents, etc.), Relevance (to the students lives and passions - i.e. "what's in it for me"), Rigor (allow them to concentrate intensely in an area of their interest - build depth, not breadth)
9. Insure a shared philosophy among the principal and teachers [i.e. management]
10. Fix the atmosphere. Create an environment for learning. Fun, happiness, respect, kindness.
11. Build celebration into the culture. Celebrate often, for various occasions.
12. Know who really sets the culture of a school [or organization]. It's the senior students [middle management and vocal champions -- what Seth Godin calls "the sneezers" --those who can spread an "idea virus"]. Engage them in recreating the culture, and others will follow suit. You can't change the culture by holding a special assembly [or a meeting or a memo]
13. Never make rules based on the exception.
14. To build trust and respect, provide responsibility and decision-making to students, and control over their environment, tools, and learning
15. A culture can thrive and grow on its own stories. Every interaction helps build the culture.
16. Start with the student, not the subjects or classes. Quote: "One size never fits all. One size fits one." - Tom Peters
17. Use real world examples - or better yet, real projects. Students can tell when things really matter and when they're contrived. [so can business people learning project management]
18. Don't give grades. The real world is based on giving feedback and showing people what they need to do to improve. It helps students succeed. Grades are meaningless, subjective, and can destroy morale. Use a narrative instead. It's a tool to help learning, not evaluation for evaluation's sake.
19. Quote: "Nobody grew taller by being measured." - Phillip Gammage
20. Measure what counts. There is no one indicator of success that fits every student. Instead, measure how often a student talks to teachers about their problems [builds the right culture]; measure if parents agree the school is a safe place and that it views parents as partners [i.e. customer satisfaction]
21. Friends of change [6 C's] are: concentration (on your philosophy), commitment, conversation, collaboration, caring, conviviality

Project Estimating; Triple Constraint Must Stay Firm

Here's a great article from TechRepublic about project estimating and forecasting. It cautions that one of the worst things to do is to try to force a project to fit within an arbitrary management deadline. That means project managers must defend the right plan or suffer with poor results.

A properly estimated project must be based on planning, and be managed to the triple constraint of scope, time and cost (and of course, at PMThink we've discussed other potential variables, such as quality, risk, customer satisfaction, and more).

Here's TechRepublic's advice to CIO's:

Project managers talk about a project’s “triple constraints” of scope (work), time (schedule), and cost (budget)... For the team to make decisions that are closely aligned to the way you would like them to be made, you must clearly state the project priorities. There’s no such thing as “all three variables are equally important.”

Read on for more details or proper estimating and forecasting...

How to accurately estimate and forecast in project management

Knowledge Management: IT Service Delivery Capability

Leverage of a strong knowledge base is a key component of IT service desk delivery. Partnership serves to integrate IT service desk solution with powerful knowledge management capability. ...

Knowledge Management: IT Service Delivery Capability: Via Axios Systems, the leading ITIL based Help Desk and IT Service Management solution: Axios leverages expert Knowledge to push boundaries in IT Service Management ...

... "Knowledge is the life blood of any organization. In today's complex business environments, managing the combination of legacy IT systems and increasing adoption of new technologies, the duties of the IT Service Desk have never been more challenging. Accurate knowledge of these business critical applications and systems is a necessity, with correct and swift knowledge retrieval essential to ensure customer satisfaction, business efficiency and profitability. Axios Systems partnership with Knowledge Powered Solutions (KPS) and Right Answers enables Axios to provide a fully-integrated Knowledge Management solution with RightAnswers knowledge content delivered through KPS leading-edge search technology. " ...

Outstanding Project Heritage: PACCAR ...

Interesting anecdote on an outstanding accomplishment by PACCAR: 4600 Six Sigma projects. This project management heritage is enabling strong corporate performance. ...

Outstanding Project Heritage: PACCAR: Via PACCAR Inc: PACCAR Profits Surge 24 Percent: Best Quarter in Company’s 100-Year History: PACCAR Announces Stock Repurchase ...

... "PACCAR's geographic diversification, disciplined business practices and innovative product breadth have been key success factors in the company's outstanding financial performance, added Pigott. Over the past 10 years, PACCAR has invested over $1.5 billion to fund capital projects which have enhanced the company's technology leadership, resulting in the highest product quality and customer satisfaction in the industry. In addition, completion of 4,600 Six Sigma projects has contributed to the company's record manufacturing efficiency. " ...

Evaluating Project Tradeoffs: Some Guidelines for Success

Anyone familiar with PMI principles knows the triple contraint of time, cost, and scope, and the fact that it can be used when negotiating tradeoffs. You're probably also familiar with additional tradeoffs, such as quality/grade, risk, customer satisfaction (if that's even a variable), etc.

When negotiations come to a grinding halt, we also have some other proven tools to keep in our back pocket, including:

• Fast Tracking (doing some tasks in parallel that would usually be done sequentially, which of course should be used carefully since it can add risk)
• Crashing (loosely defined as analyzing alternatives to compress the duration for the least amount of additional cost, but typically interpreted as adding resources or forcing overtime, which carries risk and adds more cost than people realize)
• Time-boxing (reducing functionality for the first release and moving it to a future release)
• Problem solving (i.e. considering other approaches to solve the root problem)

In my experience, the two methods that work best by far are time-boxing and problem solving, usually in that order, and often in combination. I also find that time tends to be the most frequently stated hard constraint, with scope and even cost somewhat more flexible (although the requester rarely admits that).

Usually, scope is the most flexible (some argue over semantics of scope vs. features/functions, vs. deliverables vs. sphere of implementation, but I tend to lump it all under "scope").

And of course, when it comes to overarching priorities, I always fall back to my own tried and true "two-sentence principle", which I stated a few weeks ago:

Speed is more important than cost. And success (in whatever form that takes) is more important than speed.

In countless IT projects, these guidelines have served me well. I'd be curious about others experiences when making tradeoffs, especially in other industries.

How many elements are there in the triple constraint?

In addition to the normal triple constraint elements:
1) Time (or schedule)
2) Resources (effort and/or budget)
3) Scope
discussed in this article, there are two other important elements to every project:
4) Quality
5) Customer Satisfaction

What if you delivered the scope on time and on budget but it wasn't up to the quality standards of your customer (or user of the product or service)? Would your project be a success. I think not! And what if you delivered the full-scope, it met the customer's quality expectations, was delivered on time, on budget, but you and your team were extremely difficult to work with? Would the project be a resounding success in your customer's eyes? Would they want to work with you again? Most likely not.

The article is dead on, though, in suggesting that the PM should be sure to ask the sponsor(s) to prioritize the "triple" constraint at the beginning of each project. Just remember that there are 5 elements and they are all important!

Triple Constraint--Friend or Foe?

Project Management: Acceptance Process Define in Project Plan ...

Project Management: Acceptance Process Define in Project Plan: Via New York State Office of Technology: Section provides Project Managers with a compilation of references and resources to use as they seek to further their education and skills in project management ...

When is a project deliverable complete? And, who says that it is complete? The project manager? The project team? A sticky issue. Here's advice for a disciplined approach to managing the acceptance of deliverables ...

... "Acceptance Management: A process to be used throughout the project to obtain approval from an authorized Customer Decision Maker for work done on the project to date. This process is defined and included in the Project Plan. The approval at each stage means that the deliverable(s) for that stage are completed to the satisfaction of the Customer. In order for a deliverable to be considered complete and acceptable, it is measured against pre-determined acceptance criteria. " ...

OFT is predicated on both collaboration and innovation as it strives to guide the State's technology future. By taking advantage of emerging technology, OFT works to improve government services -- making state government more efficient, integrated, cost-effective and accessible.