| [epf-dev] PM update - no meeting tomorrow |
Just a reminder that we will not have a PM meeting tomorrow. However, with all known PM items identified and in Bugzilla, we are in a good position to look at the body of work remaining, review priorities and point estimates, and assignments. But, before we get to that, some recent thoughts...
In some discussions this week at the Agile conference, some of us have thought about further simplifying the PM discipline. Current thoughts are to reduce the six PM tasks to four:
- Plan Project
- Plan Iteration
- Manage Risk
- Assess Results
Manage Risk would replace Monitor and Control Project. The thought here is that on a small, agile project, "monitoring and controlling the project" seems a little overbearing. One could consider the daily standup meeting in Scrum as a technique for continually reviewing, assessing, and adapting to project risks. These risks may be related to technology, requirements, resources, scope, etc. This has the effect of elevating risk management to a first-class activity, versus it being buried as steps in several other tasks.
It also seemed like there was too much ceremony in having two tasks: Plan Iteration and Initiate Iteration. It made sense to us that in a small project, these would happen together at the same time. So collapsing them into one (Plan Iteration) seemed appropriate.
Since this is for small projects, we thought removing the Close-Out Project task would be appropriate as well. We discussed using guidelines to distinguish between four different type of status assessments:
- Mid-iteration assessment
- End of iteration assessment
- End of phase assessment
- End of project assessment
I'm not sure if this should be one guideline or four or somewhere in between.
As many maybe considering, these changes will impact the PM capability patterns. I'm not sure what those should be for sure, but current PM has 4 CPs of the 10 building block CPs, which seems a little unbalanced (compared to 6 CPs for the remaining 5 disciplines). In the OpenUP Venn diagram thing I sent out yesterday, I proposed the following BB CPs:
- Initiate Project
- Manage Expectations
- Prove Architecture
- Manage Iteration
- Define Architecture
- Build Work Item (not the best name, methinks)
It seems like we need at least one more BB CP, maybe two. I'm not sure right now, but perhaps at least one more for transition/deployment/end-of-lifecycle activities seems pertinent.
Instead of having four CPs for the phases that are named after the phases themselves, I suggest more "intent-oriented" names…
- Understand Problem (inception)
- Understand Solution (elaboration)
- Develop Solution (construction)
- Deliver Solution (transition)
Now that this email has gone on and on and on, I'll send out another shortly regarding PM team activities…
Thanks, Chris ~:|
Chris Armstrong ~:|
President
Armstrong Process Group, Inc.
651.491.5575 c
715.246.0383 f
www.aprocessgroup.com
"proven practical process"
Come see APG at:
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Agile 2006 International Conference
Minneapolis, MN, July 23-28, 2006 - www.agile2006.com
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14th IEEE International Requirements Engineering Conference
Minneapolis, MN, September 11-15, 2006 - www.re06.org