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Components of a Project

So the next thing I will be blogging about is maintenance planning. I will create an PDF infographic document that will create a graphic road map for maintennace planning. This will endeavour to cover all aspects of the components that are required create an effective maintenance strategy. Although this will primarly look at maintenace planning in the oil industry…

Agile is a new type of planning system and would not be relevant or the correct system to be using for all projects. There are many industries that it would not be useful and where a clearer and more accurate planning system is required. 

I understand that it is trying to cover an industry, mainly the software industry, which has been difficult to plan for in the past. It does what it says…

Sometimes with newer Agile teams, you’ll hear them say, “We don’t plan because we’re Agile.” This causes a lot of confusion with the rest of the organization. They’ll justifiably ask the question, how can you run a project without any planning? The truth is, you can’t. 

Agile does have planning, it’s just different from traditional project management planning. The planning rules are there,…

One of the sticking points with new Agile teams is deciding what is considered acceptable documentation. Remember from the manifesto that Agile projects prioritize working software. That doesn’t mean that Agile projects produce no documentation. Instead, it should produce just enough documentation. 

After the Agile Alliance wrote their manifesto, they created a list of agile principles.…

In Agile you’re not estimating for individuals, you’re estimating work for the entire team. Many different developers on the team work on the same story. Some developers might decide the story is more complex. Another developer might think that the story is less complex; they could finish it up before lunch. There’s no way to tell which developer is right until the work begins. 

Planning…

All the project planning is in hours, days, and weeks. In these meetings you’ll go around the room and ask for time estimates. Often the metric is more precise than the team’s ability to understand the work. So they’ll end up giving you a range. They’ll say, it could take one to three days. Agile doesn’t fix how bad teams are at estimating. Instead the team spends much less time on this…

Creating your Project Charter

Having once worked for an organization on a large Agile project. The project had started about six months earlier. After I arrived I asked to see the project charter. I figured that the charter is always a good way to see the overall direction of the project. One thing I immediately noticed is there wasn’t any success criterion to finish the project. There was also no overall mission. I asked…

Grouping with Themes or Epics

Sometimes user stories start their lives as epics. The product owner usually creates a large value statement instead of several smaller stories. That’s okay. That’s just the way most people think. A theme, or epic, is a way to organize stories into groups. You might have an epic to upgrade the database. It’s important to remember that these are large big epics and not the same as user…

User stories are a great way to have conversations between developers and the product owner. It’s usually when you start having these conversations that you realize that your user stories are not very good, but that’s okay. The real challenge will be figuring out just why your user stories are so bad. 

Thankfully, there’s a good way to figure out the challenges with your user stories. You…

Project requirements strive to be written in clear, direct language.  It’s usually when you turn this clear language into work that you realize that there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation. Unfortunately it’s almost impossible to predict how each person will interpret your language. Often a quick conversation is the only way to make sure that everyone knows the work.  

Agile projects…

User Roles and three CCC’s

The product owner is the team’s North Star.  They’re the light that represents the customer value.  They may know a little bit about what it takes to deliver the project, but they won’t create the kind of detailed technical specifications you need for a traditional project.  Instead, the product owner will always speak the customer’s language.  The customer’s language is much different from…

How to Plan with Estimates

Projects are unique by definition.  There’ll be something in your project that you haven’t done yet.  Usually the greater the uncertainty, the more trouble you’ll have with traditional project planning.  

Traditional projects depend on upfront planning.  If you have a lot of uncertainty, then you’ll have a lot of guesses in your plan.  If your guesses are wrong, then it will create a lot…

Iteration

“A general Agile term for a fixed duration of time during which development takes place.“

Sprint 

“Scrum-specific term for fixed iterations of developing a usable and potentially releasable product.“

The agile framework uses short durations of work called iterations.  In Scrum, these are commonly called sprints.  A sprint is a short, completed deliverable.  This deliverable can be…

Imagine you’re an executive and you’ve convinced your supervisors that they need a new software product by the end of the year.  Then you’re given a large sum of money to deliver that project.  You’ll get a plan from the development team about how they intend to deliver the software.  

The plan shows that by the end of the year you’ll have working software within that budget.  What often…

So my next blog is on Agile planning, follow my course to learn about this new planning method. Over the next couple of weeks we will be looking at what goes into to making a project Agile. 

Agile projects are adaptive and fast moving.  To be successful with agile, you need to follow some simple planning steps to keep the project on track.  There are only a few simple practices, but it’s…

This PDF takes a look at the numerical reasoning tests that might be useful to anyone coming into project management. I have taken some examples of questions that I think are relevant to understanding charts and graphs. Being able to analyse and read information from graphs is very important and very useful to your career as a project manager. So we will present you with some examples and…

At the request of one of my followers they wanted to understand how to read the earned value chart. So we have taken a snapshot of the excel spreadsheet chart with earned value, actual costs and planned value. From this we can work out the status of the schedule and the budget.

Q1. What is the chart below telling us?

Answer

Behind schedule and under budget.

On schedule, on budget.