If the schedule only exists to track what happened, it is a fairly useless tool. It will be glad to talk to you about the project and tell you how horrible things are, but that is not what project managers need. Here are some ideas for using the schedule to help the project instead of just using it to document failure.
Question: My team prefers to work in Story Points, but it sometimes becomes hard to deal with the realities of how to estimate a first iteration and how to deal with the availability of the team members. How do experienced agile teams handle these realities?
| A. | If you want to be agile, you must estimate in Story Points. Nothing else will really work for a team once they begin to do the work of the project. |
| B. | Neither is the correct approach. Estimate your Product Backlog in Ideal Hours, and then they will transfer over easily to the iteration work of the team. |
| C. | If you create software, use Story Points. If you use agile for any other type of project, estimate in work hours, which you can input into MS Project. |
| D. | Use Story Points for the Product Backlog, but actual hours for the Iteration Backlog. |
When creating a project schedule, most project managers use templates or old project plans that can be repurposed for the new project. There are times, however, when it is necessary to build a schedule from scratch--a task that is far more difficult
Interruptions are one of the main battles we face each and every day. What can a PM learn from them about how to manage personal productivity in a world of digital distraction?
It's inevitable--organizations will change the way that planning cycles are executed. For many organizations, this is a natural extension of the commitments that they are already making--EPMOs, strong and executive supported portfolio management, and results-focused execution. For others, this is a major shift. Here we explore some of the ways that annual planning can be improved.
There are many different methods a project manager can use to rebaseline the project plan. Unfortunately, the one most often used is reactive instead of proactive. Approach your rebaselining event in a careful and methodical manner to make it worthwhile and benefit the project.
In a world where there are many big challenges and all sorts of grand designs, there are massive projects taking place everywhere we look. What can a bridge halfway around the world teach us?
Welcome to "The Truth About Projects", a popular new show that helps save you from missed budgets, blown timelines and under-performing or under-delivering projects by answering your questions on all things project management! Caller, you're on the air...
The Olympic rings are five intertwined circles that represent the elaborate and complex Games. Similarly, project managers can bring five rings of discipline together to manage very complex projects. Each of these rings builds upon the other--and they give the project manager a taxonomy by which to manage Olympian efforts
Are you putting your PMO in the position to make the right decisions every time? While the PMO has many functions, one of the most important is to facilitate decision-making--either by senior project stakeholders or within their own teams as escalation points for project managers. In this article, we look at how to ensure that we are as effective as possible in that process.
"Big" is somewhat defined in the eyes of the beholder. Beyond sheer size and mass, what makes big projects so daunting? Certainly as a project grows in size and scope, a number of things increase along with it--each adding complexity and risk to the effort. While there is no foolproof way to eliminate the risks associated to big projects, there are some things you can do to reduce those risks.
As project managers, we often reinforce the importance of proper PM in our professional projects. However, when it comes to our personal projects, do you apply the project management mindset and tools? One writer has found project management useful for a few significant personal projects.
If you’ve developed any training material for your projects, then you’ve familiar with process flow charts and supporting tasks. In IT projects, there is usually an operational process or workflow that the end users follows to put the IT solution into action. Even though workflow is associated with recurring operational tasks, they can be applied to professional and personal projects. Here, one writer looks at a free offering that might make your personal PM run a lot smoother.
Before you submit your project plan for final approval, you'd better check it over. Learn the steps for cross-checking a project plan.
There is a lot riding on your project's work breakdown structure. Use this worksheet to help you plan the WBS smarter and better.
This list and overview of common schedule risks will help you maintain vigilance against pitfalls that can interrupt, stop or ruin your software development project.
The attached workbook is useful for these many projects out there where no costing data can be used--or is not available--so the classic Earned Value Technique cannot be applied. It provides not only a progress tracking mechanism but also effort based project forecasting based on the above consideration.
This webinar provides an overview of key principles and practices for effective Agile project estimating and planning that have helped many Construx customers greatly increase the accuracy of their project forecasts, enabling them to make better go/no-go decisions, increase the predictability of their projects, and deliver their projects successfully... on time, within budget constraints, and with the desired functionality.
This list was created to help you estimate how much effort is required to implement and test a change request.
Alot of project management is wrapped up in the idea of scheduling. Many project management software packages put the management of schedule front and centre; for some, it's all they really actually provide support for managing. Project management courses emphasize the ideas of managing the critical path, building Gantt charts and analyzing PERT networks. Much stress is created about project schedules, milestones, dependencies and deadlines.
If you don’t have any good metrics on which to base your estimates, what do you do? Reading tea leaves or dissecting the entrails of dead chickens won't cut it. This presentation will explain sound estimating techniques that really work.
Use this quality control checklist to identify all the ingredients of a healthy, flexible and dependable project schedule.
Your sponsor comes to you and asks how long your project will take and how many people you will need. You quickly grab your papers and your calculator, pull your basic numbers together, add some on-the-fly padding and voila!, your project schedule is built. This Project HEADWAY webinar will examine the different types of estimating, the key factors to consider when developing effort estimates, and some different tools & techniques you can use to ensure your estimates are more than pure fantasy.
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How risky is your project schedule? This assessment template will help you catch scheduling risks and address them before they become problems.
This sample template performs a PERT based estimation for a project when you provide quality estimates. The tool performs all the required calculations (including graphical display of the destribution and probability functions).
If developing a schedule were easy, no project manager would ever have a problem with it. This presentation serves as a guide to the key points that must be mastered to develop realistic project schedules.
No one can predict the future, but you as project manager will be asked to estimate the duration of tasks. You can get yourself a crystal ball, read tea leaves, or download this presentation for some real help.
Earned value is a project technique you can use to monitor, track and report on the performance of any project. This document is a cheat-sheet of formulas you can use to confidently calculate earned value.
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"Brevity is the soul of lingerie." - Dorothy Parker |
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