by Dip Bagchi
In the agile Scrum world, instead of providing complete, detailed descriptions of how everything is to be done on a project, much of it is left up to the Scrum software development team. This is because the team will know best how to solve the problem they are presented.
This is why in Scrum development, for example, a sprint planning meeting is described in terms of the desired outcome (a commitment to a set of features to be developed in the next sprint) instead of a set of Entry criteria, Task definitions, Validation criteria, Exit criteria (ETVX) and so on, as would be provided in most methodologies.
Scrum relies on a self-organizing, cross-functional team. The scrum team is self-organizing in that there is no overall team leader who decides which person will do which task or how a problem will be solved. Those are issues that are decided by the team as a whole.
And in Scrum, a team is cross functional, meaning everyone is needed to take a feature from idea to implementation.
Within agile development, Scrum teams are supported by two specific roles. The first is a ScrumMaster, who can be thought of as a coach for the team, helping team members use the Scrum process to perform at the highest level.
The product owner (PO) is the other role, and in Scrum software development, represents the business, customers or users, and guides the team toward building the right product.
The Scrum model suggests that projects progress via a series of sprints. In keeping with an agile methodology, sprints are timeboxed to no more than a month long, most commonly two weeks.
Scrum methodology advocates for a planning meeting at the start of the sprint, where team members figure out how many items they can commit to, and then create a sprint backlog – a list of the tasks to perform during the sprint.
During an agile Scrum sprint, the Scrum team takes a small set of features from idea to coded and tested functionality. At the end, these features are done, meaning coded, tested and integrated into the evolving product or system.
On each day of the sprint, all team members should attend a daily Scrum meeting, including the ScrumMaster and the product owner. This meeting is timeboxed to no more than 15 minutes. During that time, team members share what they worked on the prior day, will work on that day, and identify any impediments to progress.
The Scrum model sees daily scrums as a way to synchronize the work of team members as they discuss the work of the sprint.
At the end of a sprint, the team conducts a sprint review during which the team demonstrates the new functionality to the PO or any other stakeholder who wishes to provide feedback that could influence the next sprint.
This feedback loop within Scrum software development may result in changes to the freshly delivered functionality, but it may just as likely result in revising or adding items to the product backlog.
Another activity in Scrum project management is the sprint retrospective at the end of each sprint. The whole team participates in this meeting, including the ScrumMaster and PO. The meeting is an opportunity to reflect on the sprint that has ended, and identify opportunities to improve.
The primary artifact in Scrum development is, of course, the product itself. The Scrum model expects the team to bring the product or system to a potentially shippable state at the end of each Scrum sprint.
The product backlog is another artifact of Scrum. This is the complete list of the functionality that remains to be added to the product. The product owner prioritizes the backlog so the team always works on the most valuable features first.
The most popular and successful way to create a product backlog using Scrum methodology is to populate it with user stories, which are short descriptions of functionality described from the perspective of a user or customer.
In Scrum project management, on the first day of a sprint and during the planning meeting, team members create the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog can be thought of as the team’s to-do list for the sprint, whereas a product backlog is a list of features to be built (written in the form of user stories).
The sprint backlog is the list of tasks the team needs to perform in order to deliver the functionality it committed to deliver during the sprint.
Additional artifacts resulting from the Scrum agile methodology is the sprint burndown chart and release burndown chart. Burndown charts show the amount of work remaining either in a sprint or a release, and are an effective tool in Scrum software development to determine whether a sprint or release is on schedule to have all planned work finished by the desired date.
Even if you are new to Scrum, you may have heard of a role called the ScrumMaster. The ScrumMaster is the team’s coach, and helps Scrum practitioners achieve their highest level of performance.
In the Scrum process, a ScrumMaster differs from a traditional project manager in many ways, including that this role does not provide day-to-day direction to the team and does not assign tasks to individuals.
A good ScrumMaster shelters the team from outside distractions, allowing team members to focus maniacally during the sprint on the goal they have selected.
While the ScrumMaster focuses on helping the team be the best that it can be, the product owner works to direct the team to the right goal. The product owner does this by creating a compelling vision of the product, and then conveying that vision to the team through the product backlog.
The product owner is responsible for prioritizing the backlog during Scrum development, to ensure it’s up to par as more is learned about the system being built, its users, the team and so on.
The third and final role in Scrum project management is the Scrum team itself. Although individuals may join the team with various job titles, in Scrum, those titles are insignificant. Scrum methodology states that each person contributes in whatever way they can to complete the work of each sprint.
This does not mean that a tester will be expected to re-architect the system; individuals will spend most (and sometimes all) of their time working in whatever discipline they worked before adopting the agile Scrum model. But with Scrum, individuals are expected to work beyond their preferred disciplines whenever doing so would be for the good of the team.
One way to think of the interlocking nature of these three roles in this agile methodology is as a racecar.
The Scrum team is the car itself, ready to speed along in whatever direction it is pointed. The product owner is the driver, making sure that the car is always going in the right direction. And the ScrumMaster is the chief mechanic, keeping the car well tuned and performing at its best.
Here are six key documents that project managers and their teams rely on to successfully guide and execute projects.
Careful project planning and execution rest on having talented project managers and the right techniques and tools. There are also several key documents that enable sponsors, project managers, teams, and stakeholders the ability to carefully and precisely manage required project activities. Below is a list of those documents, the role they play, and why each one is necessary for managing project activities and providing necessary deliverables.
Within initiating a project, the project initiator or sponsor develops a document called a project charter. This is a document that identifies the need for the project, formally provides authorization for a project, and grants authority to the project manager to request resources and conduct project activities. The project charter contains:
Within the planning phase, a project management plan is developed by the project manager in collaboration with the project sponsor or initiator, based on the information provided by the project charter. This essential document guides the entire project and details the management plans that cover the following:
This essential document is a decomposition of the entire project that identifies all the work to be carried out by the project team to meet the project goals and successfully deliver the customer product or service. In the WBS, all deliverables (product or service) are broken down to the smallest unit. The information that goes into the WBS comes from the scope management plan, the project scope statement, any requirements documentation, as well as enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets that are identified.
How to effectively deal with potential risks is always of significant concern to any project manager and their team. The risk management plan identifies any potential risks to the success of the project and documents how those risks will be addressed. Inputs for this plan will come from the project management plan and project charter, the stakeholder register, enterprise environmental factors, and organizational c assets.
This essential document can save organizations, project managers and their teams, sponsors, and stakeholders significant grief. It identifies any and all changes requested, including who made the request and who authorized it to be enacted. This document is crucial since the entire project scope can be adversely impacted by what can seem like a slight change.
Progress reports are also vital in keeping all stakeholders up-to-date with how the project is progressing, and whether it is on time, on budget, meeting the quality specifications necessary, and, above all, meeting the intended goals and expected deliverables.
In addition to these six vital project management documents, there are of course other necessary documents for successful project execution. These six documents will help you define, plan, monitor, control, execute and guide your projects more accurately and effectively.
tcan be difficult managing a team. If you do it badly, you can confuse your team, shatter morale, miss deadlines, and possibly worst of all: be responsible for leading a disappointing project.
But fear not! We’ve laid out all the modern project management techniques and concepts, along with ways to execute them (and additional reading for each one), so that you can lead your team more efficiently.
If you’re a traditionally trained project manager, none of this will come as a surprise to you. But if you don’t necessarily have a formal background in PM work, and have yet somehow found yourself in the role of project manager (even if that’s not your official title!), having a handle on these basics can help:
Waterfall has been mostly out of fashion (especially in the software engineering world) for a while now, but many of these other systems were developed as a response to it, so we’ll cover it first.
It was originally adapted to software development from the manufacturing world, and it’s sequential — not cyclical or iterative.
That means you plan the entire project out at the start of the project, and then go down the plan step by step, checking everything off.
Most of us instinctively plan in a Waterfall style (since we’re never taught anything different, unless we go out of our way to learn it), but a lot of its detractors argue that it’s inefficient, especially compared to other styles.
Scrum has its origins in the late 80s/early 90s. Scrum uses incremental, iterative cycles, instead of planning the whole project out at the start.
Scrum also has pre-defined team roles (product owner, development team, and scrum master).
This method acknowledges that customers/clients often change their mind about what they want in ways that can’t be addressed in traditional methods (like Waterfall), and focuses on maximizing the team’s ability to ship products and respond to new requirements as they emerge.
Scrum emphasizes working in sprints of 30 days and also has a heavy focus on daily meetings (standups or daily scrums) while a sprint is ongoing. There are also structured reviews and retrospectives as a part of the process.
Agile draws on older methods and ideas going back as far as the 1970s, but became much more popular when 17 software developers came together to write and release the Agile Manifesto circa 2001.
Like a few of these terms, it’s often used as an umbrella term for a set of process, product, and project management techniques.
The idea behind Agile is essentially that you complete small portions of the project/product (vs. a full version of the project/product) in each cycle, and modify the overall project course based on customer/client feedback as you complete cycles.
Getting this feedback as you’re developing the product lets you create something that meets current customer needs, with minimal cost/waste/time spent. Part of the reason Agile has become so popular is because it’s fairly easy to modify for your specific team’s wants/needs.
Lean isn’t really a “true” project management method in the way many of these other concepts are, but it has had a lot of influence in product development, so it’s worth touching on.
Like several of these ideas, Lean started in the product development and manufacturing world, created by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota.
You’ve probably heard of the Lean Startup, which codifies a lot of the product development aspects of Lean into a set of business processes and adapts them for the startup world. The fundamental idea behind Lean is more value with less waste — getting rid of the waste in your business processes. Other Lean philosophies include:
Some teams work with one specific project management style basically straight “out of the box,” without feeling the need for modification. Other teams take a system and modify it until it meets their needs (or take the big-picture pieces from 2–3 different project management concepts and then work them together into their own system).
Typically, the pieces being modified are:
For example, daily standups are often too much for a lot of teams, so they switch it to weekly. Another option is to do a meeting on Monday to discuss what’s on deck for the week and give your team a chance to ask any questions they have, then a recap on Friday to discuss what got done, what didn’t, and why.
Generally, it’s good to test for about 1–3 months to see if something is sticking.
It’s especially helpful to create (with your team’s input, of course!) a list of problems that you’re attempting to solve by trying out a new project management method. That list will give you a metric as to whether your test was a success or not.
Even after you’ve found something that works really well for your team, it’s still a good idea to do quarterly check-ins and make sure your system is still working as intended. Signs that your project management system needs to be shaken up include:
At Clubhouse, our project management methods have evolved over time as our needs have changed. At one point, we didn’t do daily standups — after employee number six, they were added.
We also have a bi-weekly priorities meeting where we check in on high-level goals (our Epics) that we set in the Milestones for the quarter. Those meetings were also added after we had a team of 6–7 employees and some of the team went remote.
When it comes to responsibilities, our team members are in charge of their own Epics. They don’t have to do all the work, but it is their job to herd their own cats to whatever degree they need herding.
All that said, we’re still fairly light-touch, because we’re such a small team and we all communicate so regularly. An overwrought system wouldn’t work well for us — it’d just weigh us down.
Our goal is to keep responsibility in our individual team member’s hands, instead of being held in the hands of one specific member or manager.
We’re a small, cross-functional team, with constantly overlapping work — a change in any one department can have effects that ripple across to other departments. Because of that, conversations need to happen out in the open instead of just using one person as the go-between, and our project management methods are designed to reflect that.
Are you confused about the difference between project life cycle and project management life cycle?
Many PMP aspirants have this confusion, while preparing for the PMP exam. So I thought of clarifying with a post on the differences between project life cycle and project management life cycle.
In a very simple language a life cycle means, everything that happens from introduction to the demise.
For example a product life cycle refers to everything that happens from introduction of the product till the demise of the product.
Similarly a project life cycle refers to everything that happens from initiation of the project to its closure.
Essentially a project life cycle is the logical break down of what to do “to deliver” the output of the project.
For example in a software development project the project life cycle refers to the following stages…
Essentially these are different stages in the life of a software development project from start to end.
Though there are many types of project life cycles available, the following are some of the popular project life cycles in practice. They are
If a project is divided into multiple phases, each phase goes through all the SDLC stages (Requirements, design, coding, testing, deployment and support), irrespective of project life cycle.
First of all, this is traditional project life cycle used commonly.
Project scope, time and cost are fixed and will be determined as early as possible in the life cycle of the project.
Projects divide into multiple phases. Each phase runs sequentially or in a overlapping fashion based on the dependencies.
The current project life cycle stage must complete, before starting the next project life cycle stage.
Certainly changes are expensive in this project life cycle.
If the changes occur in the later stages, it will become even more expensive due to rework that will increase.
Product or the final result will deliver at the end of the project after completing all the phases.
Most importantly defects only found during testing phase or after producing the end result. Hence they may become expensive to the project.
Customer engagement in this case would be very limited. Especially, customer would be engaged more during requirements phase (in the beginning) and in the testing/acceptance phase (in the end).
This makes the predictive life cycle inefficient, as the projects and changes are becoming very dynamic in nature.
The best example of the predictive life cycle that we all have heard is water fall model.
Unlike in the predictive life cycle, in the iterative project life cycle, projects run in multiple iterations.
The project divides into multiple phases. Every phase can be run sequentially or overlapping fashion based on the dependencies. Each phase can run through multiple iterations.
Each iteration goes through all software development life cycle (Requirements, design, coding, testing, deployment and support) phases.
Every iteration produce output for that iteration. In case, if there a change in any of the iteration, the change will move in to the next iteration depending on its priority.
Customer will receive the value early in the project, as the partial output is produced at the end of iteration. Customer will have more confidence by looking at the completed part of the output.
And if there are any gaps, customer can provide his feedback, which can be considered for any required changes in the subsequent iterations.
Customer involvement is more here, as every iteration goes through the entire SDLC.
Furthermore, Adaptive life cycle is also similar to iterative life cycle, except that
Compared to iterative, adaptive life cycle have more iterations.
In adaptive project life cycle, every iteration may produce a usable product (with partial features). So customer can also work in parallel to test and accept the work packages after every iteration, so as to save huge amount of project lead time.
So adaptive life cycle is more agile in nature and is more responsive to changes.
Changes handle naturally as they occur. Hence it is very less risky.
Customer involvement is there all the time, during the course of the complete project.
The project management life cycle is about the stages in the life of project management for any project.
Project management life cycle is what to do to manage the project work. Project management life cycle follows the project management process groups namely
The project management life cycle also passes through a logical order of the process groups starting from initiating to closing.
Though the terms both project life cycle and project management life cycle are confusing and some people misuse the terminology, the concepts are clear now.
Project life cycle is to deal with project methodology and stages.
Also we have seen what predictive, iterative and adaptive life cycles are.
Finally we understand that project management life cycle about the life cycle to manage the project work.
| Software | Collaborative software | Issue tracking system | Scheduling | Project Portfolio Management | Resource Management | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-plan | Yes | No | Yes |
Yes | Yes | |||
| 24SevenOffice | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| 5pm | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| AceProject | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Apollo | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | |||
| Assembla | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| AtTask | Yes | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes | |||
| Basecamp | Yes |
No | No | No | Yes |
|||
| Binfire | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes | |||
| Bontq | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| BrightWork | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Cashboard | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Celoxis | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Yes | |||
| Central Desktop | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| Cerebro | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Clarizen | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| ClickHome | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| codeBeamer | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| Collabtive | Yes | No | No | No | No | |||
| CompuwareChangepoint | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Comindware Tracker | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| ConceptDraw Project | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | |||
| Contactizer | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | |||
| Copper Project | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Deltek Open Plan | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Deltek WelcomHome | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | |||
| DeskAway | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Doolphy | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| dotProject | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |||
| DynaRoad | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Easy projects | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Eclipse PPM software | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| EPM Live | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Endeavour Software Project Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| eGroupWare | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |||
| enQuire | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| FastTrack Schedule | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Feng Office Community Edition | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| FinancialForce.com | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| FIT Issue Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| FogBugz | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Ganttic | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| GanttProject | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Gemini | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Genius Inside | Yes |
Yes |
Yes | Yes |
Yes |
|||
| GroveSite | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| Hall.com | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | |||
| HP Project & Portfolio Software | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Huddle | Yes | No | No | No | No | |||
| Hyperoffice | Yes | No | No | No | No | |||
| iManageProject | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | |||
| InLoox | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| in-Step | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| JIRA | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Jonas Software | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Journyx | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Kayako helpdesk software | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| KommandCore | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | |||
| KForge | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| KPlato | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Launchpad | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | |||
| LibrePlan | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| LiquidPlanner | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| LisaProject | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| MacProject | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| MantisBT | No | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| MatchWare MindView 4 Business Edition | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Mavenlink | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Merlin | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Microsoft Office Project Server | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Microsoft Project | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Microsoft SharePoint Server | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Microsoft Team Foundation Server | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Milestones Professional | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| MindGenius | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Mingle | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|||
| NetPoint | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| NetSuite | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| MyWorkPLAN | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| O3spaces | Yes | No | No | No | No | |||
| OmniPlan | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| OnePager Pro | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Onepoint Project | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| OnTime | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Open Workbench | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| OpenERP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| OpenProj | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Oracle Primavera EPPM (Primavera P6) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| phpGroupWare | Yes | Yes | No | ? | Yes | |||
| PHProjekt | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Pivotal Tracker | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Planbox | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Plandora | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Planisware | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Planner Suite | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| PLANTA Project | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| WorkLenz/PPM Central | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Project KickStart | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Project Team Builder | Yes | No | Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|||
| ProjectManager.com | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Project.net | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Project-Open | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Projectplace | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Projecturf | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| ProjektronBCS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Proliance | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Prolog Manager | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | |||
| QuickBase | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Rally Software | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Realisor | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Redmine | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| SAP RPM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| SAP Business ByDesign | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Sciforma PSNext | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Severa | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Smartsheet | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | |||
| TACTIC | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| TaskJuggler | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Teambox | Yes |
? | ? | Yes |
Yes |
|||
| Teamcenter | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| TeamDynamixHE | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| TeamLab | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| TeamPulse | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| Teamwork | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Tenrox | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Tom’s Planner | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | |||
| Trac | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | |||
| TrackerSuite.Net | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Traction TeamPage | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | |||
| Trello | Yes | ? | ? | ? | ? | |||
| Ubidesk | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | |||
| VPMi | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| web2project | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | |||
| WorkBook Software A/S | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| WorkPLAN Enterprise | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| workspace.com | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| WorkZone | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Wrike | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |||
| Xplanner | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Zoho Projects | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |||
| Software | Collaborative software | Issue tracking system | Scheduling | Project Portfolio Management | Resource Management |
