|
Capture and communicate status
The project manager needs to do the following:
-
continuously monitor the project to ensure it is progressing appropriately
-
enable the team to react as soon as possible to any change
Many alternative means may be used to track the status. Quick, daily meetings with the entire project team are useful
to understand what team members have accomplished since the last meeting, and what they plan to accomplish before
the next meeting. It also allows the team to identify any blocking issues. See Guideline: Daily Meetings.
Another approach is the collection of basic metrics, ideally automatically generated from the tools at hand, or
manually assembled. Burndown
charts are one of the most useful project progress metrics. They show how many work items where accomplished during
previous iterations (or days) and the remaining work. They can be used to track project releases and iterations
(see Report: Project Burndown and Report: Iteration Burndown). Communicating project status is as important as gathering it. Keep the information visible to
stakeholders and project team at all times. The Artifact: Project Plan should outline which metrics the project should use.
|
Handle exceptions and problems
One of the project manager's key responsibilities is to know about the project team's problems and issues. The manager
needs to focus on problems that are blocking progress. A quick, daily meeting is usually a good way to monitor those
problems and issues. A record of issues that have to be solved within the team may be kept in the Iteration Plan.
Identify the cause and impact of problems and exceptions as they arise. Identify possible solutions for problems that
have an immediate impact on the short-term goals and objectives and identify who needs to be involved in implementing
the solution. Then, define the corrective actions and implement them.
|
Identify and manage risks
Identify risks as soon as the project starts and continue identifying and managing risks throughout the project. The Risk List should be revisited weekly, or as a minimum once per iteration. The
entire team should be involved in identifying and mitigating risks.
|
Manage objectives
| When a team is falling significantly behind, or critical problems occur, that prevents the team from meeting the
iteration objectives it may be necessary to descope work to ensure that the team delivers a useful product increment by the
end of the iteration, while maximizing stakeholder value. The project manager should work with the team and
stakeholders to revise the Iteration Plan and, as necessary, reduce the emphasis on less critical tasks postponing
them to a subsequent iteration. In rare cases, if the iteration objectives still seem impossible to be met, the team might
consider terminating the iteration or reformulating the iteration to a new objective. |
|
