Chapter 13 - Project on track Flashcards
Reviewing the plan
- Important, especially if there has passed since the compilation of the plan
- PM should have the authority to preform a final review and update the plan before execution
- List of things to be documented, reviewed and approved before execution on p. 321
What should you replace a larger delivery with?
- Several smaller deliveries
- Should be thought about already in planning
Baseline/original plan
- An approved schedule
- Needed in order to have something to be compared with
Pros and cons with digital planning tools
+ Plan can be shared with everyone, regardless of their geographic location
+ Can connect schedule to spreadsheets and tools for follow-up
+ Can preform analysis and simulations
- Lose comprehensive view, plan is not physically in front of you. Can usually only see part on the screen.
Who has approved the original plan?
Project owner and steering committee
Revised plan
The plan with approved changes
Outcomes
Project status in the form of activities performed, milestones approved or sprints preformed, and costs reported
Forecasts
Relates to analyses preformed for the future project work, based on the results up to this point
Responsibility matrix
- Often called RACI
- Define who is in charge of execution
- Who has decision-making mandates
- Who needs what information
RACI stands for
Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed
Milestone chart
- Planned milestones are compared with when they were completed in reality
- Indicating the intersection between the vertical line from the planned milestone and the horizontal line from the actual realised one
- Above diagonal: ahead of plan, below diagonal: behind schedule
Percentage - work performed
- Indicating performed and approved activities with different colors to get a good overview of the project
- Assessing how much of activity that remains may be difficult, up to PM or person performing activity to provide subjective assessment
- Can use criteria (such as 25, 50, 75, 100 percent) to simplify follow-up
Project boards
- Suitable for all types of projects
- Normally used in sgile projects
- Work tasks defined in WBS are transferred to cards, which are moved between the columns as they are performed
Daily scrum
- Effective method for following up a project
- Max 15 minutes of meeting
- Answers What did you do yesterday? What are you going ti do today? Are there any obstacles?
Burndown chart
- Check off tasks performed and ongoing work on a daily basis
- Not unusual for the sprint log to grow during a sprint
- Important to ensure that you have a margin for the unexpected
Burn-rate
- Measure of a team’s productivity
- Shows how many posts or “story points” are handled each sprint
- Result is presented to PO and client
- PO decides if the results can be approved and delivered
When should costs be reported?
One of the following options is usually applied:
- 100% of costs are reported when the activity is begun
- -> avoids giving an impression that the project is doing better than it is, cost wise, but also shows that the projects look like going over budget
- 100% of costs are reported when the activity is finished and approved
- -> will look good in the reporting but can lead to unpleasant surprises
- 50% of costs are reported when the activity is begun and 50% when the activity is finished and approved
- -> Might be a more correct method
What does the cost for agile projects depend on?
- How many teams take part
- How many sprints each team perform
- It is simply a matter of multiplication
Six steps for keeping project costs under control
- Reporting and following up on actual costs as compared with the plan
- Identifying deviations as compared with the plan
- Identifying the causes of deviations
- Creating and implementing relevant measures
- Following up to see if the measures have fixed the problem
- Creating further measures if necessary
Earned Value Management, EVM
- Gives chance to assess both actual results and resources used throughout the project
- The results achieved (EV) are evaluated in financial terms, so they can be compared with PV and AC
EV
Earned Value - The value of the work performed
- The budgeted cost for activities performed at a certain time
PV
Planned Value - The planned cost for the work performed
- Number of work hours planned for the activities that have been performed up until the time of measurement
AC
Actual Cost - The actual cost of the work performed
- Actual number of hours used in execution
BAC
Budget At Completion - the planned cost for the entire project
