5 Key Chart Project Management (TM) Methodology

Project Management in Real Life How to balance creative chaos and control

Objectives
Be able to implement at least one new project management tool tomorrow
Be able to eventually set up your own PMO

Agenda
Why bother?
Project Management principles
Methodology
Scoping & Estimating
Planning
Managing
People
Agile techniques
Manifesto
Scrum, RUP, XP
Test-driven development

Intros
Take 10 seconds to tell us
Your name
What you do
Your workshop goals

Preview - The 5 Key Charts Estimated Finish Final Cost People QPI Quality

Preview - The 5 Key documents Scope Change Form Issues Log Project Plan Status Report Quality Checklists

Why Bother?
Your projects are late, over-budget, low margin, shipping with bugs
You & your team are pulling heroics to keep things under control
You & your team are burned out.

Why Bother?
% of projects with large schedule slips
Software Engineering Institute

What is a project?
Achieve objectives
Produce deliverables
Start and end date
Consume resources (people, $)

Methodology
Methodology: codified, repeatable set of methods & tools
PM methodology
Set of standard PM processes & deliverables
Project Methodology
IT project: Propose, Define, Design, Develop, Test, Go-Live, Support
Construction: Feasibility, Planning & Design, Production, Turnover & Startup
RUP: Inception, Elaboration, Construction, Transition

PM & Project Methodologies Propose Define Develop Conclude Design Test Structure & Plan Conclude Assess, Report, Control
Proposal
Proposal
Charter
Workplan
Milestones
Requiremts
Site map
Wireframes
Use cases
Graphic design
Technical architecture
Logical design
Physical design
System components
Unit
System
User acceptance
Documen-tation
Training
Code control
Scope Change Log
Issues Management Log
Risk Management Log
Weekly status reports
5 Key charts
Customer feedback
Admin. closure

The Scope Triangle Good Cheap Fast

The Triangle, again Scope Specifications/ Quality Time/ Schedule Budget/ Cost

Scoping
Proposal/Charter/Statement of Work/Contract
Objectives: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reach (realistic), Time-bound
Deliverables: Include PM & standard project deliverables from methodology!
Functionality In scope & Out of scope
Schedule
Team (Roles & Responsibilities)
Process: Include PM!
Terms
Cost
Requirements/Design/Specs

Estimating
Decomposition (microscopic/bottom-up)
Have at least 2 levels of abstraction
Analogy (micro or macro)
Delphi with feedback: get experts to go away & estimate, bring group together & show estimates, then re-estimate.
Macro
Modeling (heuristic, phenomenological). Derived from basic “physics” about how projects work. Observe key project variables (time, money, scope, quality, people) and make an equation. Use Excel to get a regression.
Design to cost or duration. Here’s what we can do with what’s available.
PERT t e =(best case + worst case + 4*most likely)/6

Planning the work
ODW
Objectives --> Deliverables --> Workplan
WBS
Break down by phase, by product, activity, location…
Uniqueness
OAK: One Arse to Kick. Exactly one person’s name per task, or no-one’s responsible. (No organizations.)
One task for a given person & date combo
Grammar
Tasks verb-noun, “Complete design document”
Milestones noun-verb, “Design Complete”

Planning the work, 2
Effort versus Duration
Effort (work) is the number of person-hours expended to do the task.
Duration is how long it takes from beginning to end.
Duration = work/resource allocation
Tips
Tasks, dependencies, durations, resources
Use F-S relationships
Ask the people doing the tasks for estimates!!
Tasks 0.5 to 10 days, ideal 2-5 days
Milestones & summary tasks - no person names
Beware the Mythical Man-Month (Fred Brooks)!

Planning Tools
Stickies, index cards, string, whiteboard
Great for brainstorming, communicating!
Word & Excel
Simple to-do list, no dependencies, little tracking.
Task, Due, Responsible, Status
“ Groupware”
Track & communicates to-do’s, milestones, files
BaseCamp, SharePoint
Bugzilla, Mantis, Trac - issue tracking
Desktop tools
MSProject - de facto standard
OmniPlan, Merlin, some web-based
Portfolio Management (Enterprise)
MSProject Sever, Project.net, Primavera, Clarity

Views - Gantt chart

Views - Network Diagram (PERT chart)

Working the plan
Baselining
Tracking Gantt
Binary statusing
“ Plan at level 3, manage at level 2”
Action Items versus updating plan
When does it go on the plan (versus in someone’s to-do list?)
When it’s required to complete a deliverable
When someone else is dependent on the output
When it’s longer than x hours (4) in effort
When it’s important enough for the team to know about

Working the plan 2
Meetings
Collaborative plan development
First use Gantt to walk everyone through the plan (1+ hours)
Then can use personal to-do lists from PM tool

Critical Path Management
Critical Path is the longest path through the project plan. If any task on the critical path slips, the end date slips. Zero float.
Must have successors to each task (dependencies) to calculate
Possible to have multiple critical branches.
“ Float” = duration until critical, =LF-EF
“ Manage The Critical Path”
And then know what’s likely to become critical.
If you’re strapped for time, make sure you at least know what’s going on with your critical path.

Views - Tracking Gantt

Resource Leveling
MSProject or other PM tool
Use Resource Usage view, adjust hours in daily yellow blocks
Move start date, stretch duration of non-critical tasks, reassign.
Otherwise
Spreadsheet: People on one axis, days/weeks on other, hours in cells
Look out for micro-managing

Views - Resource Graph

Views - Resource Usage

Scope Management
Scope Change Request Form
Client fills out form
Estimator estimates
Client approves/denies
Work begins
Scope Change Log
Note well: ANY Change Request takes resources to process, even if it’s a zero-dollar, zero-time change.

Scope change request form

Schedule Management (“crashing the schedule”)
If there’s a schedule issue, your levers are
Schedule . Check critical path for date constraints, task dependencies, durations, task drivers, serial vs. parallel
Scope . Toss out the lowest-priority items first. It’s much easier for clients to remember it was late than it was missing their least favorite function points.
Quality . Look for perfectionism that can be downgraded to “good enough”.
Cost . Put more people on it (Fred Brooks: “Adding manpower to a late project makes it later”).
People . Burn out your people. Heroics often works, but not reliable or sustainable.

Estimated Finish Chart

Quality Management
Ensure product meets customer needs
Early = cheap
QA the proposal, the requirements & the design
Standards & Guidelines
Checklists: proposal, reqmts, design, test
Learn as you go!
Process Documentation & Improvement
TQM/6-sigma. Document, measure, manage.
Management or peer review
Testing
Traceability. From reqmts to design to test cases.
Agile & iterative techniques

Quality Measurement Tests passed

Example regression test checklist

Budget Management
Final project cost
Estimate weekly & chart
Forces PM to know how much has been spent, how much is estimated to be spent
QPI = Quick Performance Index
% spent / % done
Like earned value (get $ credit for tasks completed), but easier to compute & more sensitive to decisions - watch the trend.
1.0 = “ideal”
>1 = spending too fast or investing or making advance payments
<1 = usually not fully resourced, going to miss date.

Final project cost

Quick Performance Index

Issues Management
Issue = an item which potentially impacts scope, quality, cost, schedule, or people.
Issue reporting process
Anyone can report an issue.
First to PM
Escalate if necessary through management.
PM owns the “logging & dogging” of all project issues.
All issues reported on weekly status report.
Issue log or tracking system

Issue log

Status report

Risk Management
Description - what can we videotape going wrong?
Avoidance - get to not happen
Contingency - what we do if it does happen
Probability - how likely to happen (H/M/L or numeric or percentage)
Severity - damage caused if it happened (H/M/L or numeric or $$)

Program management
Status
Critical Path
Issues Management
Dashboard
KPI’s
5 key charts and/or other measures

Program dashboard
Green = on track
Yellow = issues, may not make it
Red = not going to make it, or didn’t

People
The soft part is the hard part
People are the most complex & least understood driver of success.
Energy level, skills, focus, personality, values, experiences, feelings, culture.
Overwork, multitasking, clear objectives, clear role, trust, communication.
Use the “People Chart”!
Names: Mood, Morale, Project Confidence Chart
Look for scatter and for trends.
The process itself is healthy & expressive.

People Chart

People - Appreciative inquiry
Effective Questions, building on strengths
Team meetings
What worked well?
What did we do to make it work?
What’s the objective?
What are the benefits of achieving the objective?
What do we need to do next?
Issues log
Ideal outcome

Putting it all together - The 5 Key Charts Estimated Finish Final Cost People QPI Quality

Putting it all together - The 5 Key documents Scope Change Form Issues Log Project Plan Status Report Quality Checklists

Key agile principles
Agilemanifesto.org
Early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development.
Trust team
Face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Sustainable development.
Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.
Self-organizing teams.

Scrum
One month timeboxes - working tested software at end.
Don’t add to iteration
Self-organizing teams
Daily build
Daily Scrum meetings
10-15 minutes
What have you done since last time, what plans till next time, what are your blocks?
Blocks gone in 1 day, decisions in 1 hour
Product & Release Backlog
Sprint “burndown”
Scrum master firewall

Example Burndown

Extreme Programming (XP)
Planning Game (story cards)
Small, frequent releases
System metaphors
Simple design
Testing
Frequent refactoring
Pair programming
Team code ownership
Continuous integration
Sustainable pace
Whole team together
Coding standards

RUP (Unified Process)
Short timeboxed iterations - peeling the onion.
Phased approach
Inception - Establish a common vision
Elaboration - Build & test risky core
Construction - Build & test the rest
Transition - Deploy
Develop high-risk & high-value elements first
Accommodate change early
50 optional “artifacts”, models
Manage requirements
Visual modeling (UML)
Continuously verify quality

Resources
PMI - Project Management Institute: www.pmi.org
PMBOK - Project Management Body of Knowledge
AgileManifesto.org, AgileAlliance.org
Craig Larman Agile & Iterative Development

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5 Key Chart Project Management (TM) Methodology

by jmcmahon89 on Jan 13, 2009

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