Anthony GilleyPMO Manager| Jeppesen SandersonGothenburg, Sweden
Hi!
I would like know how other project managers on IT delivery/implementation projects do scheduling.
In most modern methods (Scrum, ...) the team takes more ownership for the planning. But this is traditionally the PMs domain.
How have you managed to combine traditional scheduling (WBS, estimates, gant charts) with team planning and commitment? What about combining different tools (MS project with Version One)?
Thanks for your input!
Regards,
Anthony Gilley
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Steve HillProject Manager| CalAmpChristchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand
Hi,
I am working through this very problem now. I am trying to baseline a project using SCRUM methodology in a waterfall environment.
This is the first SCRUM project that company has ever done and its difficult trying to work with Senior Managers that want to be given specific dates to commit to.
I am looking at overlaying the projected burn-down of our backlog with a standard gaant that adds in contingency.
Hopefully this will give enough headroom to allow the SCRUM team to continue without any noise when projected dates change due to one sprints' performance.
Interesting stuff.
Thanks
Steve Saving Changes...
I'm a strong believer of "bottom-up" approach to deriving project schedule and work plan. Having led projects that used either traditional methods vs. the more modern iterative approach, I have had more successes when team members' input are deliberately taken and considered when working the project schedule. What I do know is that by getting "people doing the job" participate in deriving project schedule, it will usually encourage eventual ownership. The modern project manager should play the role of coach and facilitator when it comes to managing the project schedule.
What I have also observed is that commitment to a project schedule very much reflect the amount of trust various contributors have toward each other and ownership of the project.
I will advocate that beside focusing on the mechanics of deriving and managing project schedule, the project manager must also make deliberate effort to build trust among contributors. This way, for good or for bad, at least you will be mostly sure that the project schedule on hand is something that basically reflects reality. Saving Changes...
Peter WrightProgramme Manager| BAE SystemsSouthport, Merseyside, United Kingdom
I have done this / am doing this using two tols Excel & MS Project. The developers or IT speciallists normally have their own methods and systems for capturing and tracking individual task activities and therefore I do not duplicate.
Instead these activities are all aimed at achieving a specific gola/ deliverable which is what the plan focusses on. As Tian has said this give the ownership to the relevant person/team leader that they are responsible for delivering those activities and not the PM, he/she is responsible for delivering the Project not necessarily the individual daily/weekly tasks.
The Gannt Chart / Resource usage sheets are still very useful in showing the team manager / leaders the combined forecast of work so they can plan future (>1-2 weeks) resource allocation.
As the Estimates untimately form your effort & duration values in your MS Plan this needs to be easily importable for a large delivery project, as maual input woudl be too intensive to maintain changes. This is where the combination of systems becomes useful.
If however you are like me and they are not combined then Excel/Calc become the input tools.
I had to giggle a bit on this topic... The idea that a PM decides the schedule for all team members is ridiculous. Unless you have been a developer, architect, QA Analyst, BSA, network engineer, designer and producer OR a PM for 20 years - there is no way you can say how much time every work package will take to complete. Continuing on that note, there is no way a PM would be able to capture\identify risks, issues, communication - planning for everything about a project takes a team effort. Accuracy is another factor. Accuracy depends on the maturity of the team and the team members. If estimating work package durations is somthing new, your accuracy isn't going to be 100% - it also depends on whether you are estimating early in the project (without fully defined requirements vs having solid requirements).
Whether you are following waterfall, xp, whatever sdlc, a good PM always gets input from the team. It is (or should be) a team effort to create the WBS and there by, the schedule. I think something that gets lost in all the hype is that every type of SDLC is a variation of Waterfall - just faster and with different templates. When you break it down though, you are still doing all the same things (planning, requirements, design, development, qa, implementation).
For the poster that was asking about using Scrum methods in a waterfall environment - I'm curious to know - has management requested using Scrum methods? If so, they should at least have a high understanding of Scrum and understand the challenges and benefits. I'm a little confused as to why you would apply Scrum methodolgy if management is expecting long term planning that is familiar to Waterfall SDLC. You don't traditionally plan out six months in advance, so you aren't going to have dates\deliverables as you would in waterfall.
All that being said, what I have done as a consultant in the past when managing XP projects for clients is develop a high level project requirements document. The client wants x modules say - with the help of my scrum trainer (or lead developer if trainer isn't available), we review and determine if it is feasiable to deliver each module at two week intervals. If not, we break it down further (the objective is to get to two week deliverables) and create a high level schedule. Any deviation from schedule would require a communication to client as to why we are re baselining the schedule based on change in original scope. This method has worked well for me.
Keep us posted - I'm curious to see how this works out for you and the company. Saving Changes...
