Signed, Sealed and Delivered

This is the third article in the six-part Project Vital Signs series. Search the author's name to read other articles in the series.

Whereas milestones measure the speed at which the team is moving towards its goal, the deliverables tell us about the team’s accomplishments. It is important that the project manager and the sponsor monitor deliverables planned for completion versus the number of deliverables actually completed. The failure of the team to maintain a consistent deliverable hit rate suggests that there are deep-rooted issues that need to be resolved.

An important rule regarding deliverables is to define deliverables so that each one involves no more than 20 days of elapsed time. By breaking apart the workload in shorter increments, delayed deliverables are noted at a time when the effort required to catch up is manageable. In cases where the deliverables take more than 20 days to complete, often the warning flags are not raised until it is too late and the effort to catch up becomes a daunting prospect.

When assessing deliverables, the use of percent complete is dangerous. For example, what does 90 percent testing completed imply? Does it mean the programmer was looking for 10 bugs and has found nine? There are …