Task: Manage Iteration |  |
Assess project status and identify any blocking issues and/or opportunities. Identify and manage exceptions, problems and risks. Communicate project status.
Disciplines: Project Management
Purpose
To help the team to meet the iteration objectives and keep the project on track. Manage stakeholders expectations as technical and practical discoveries are made during the project.
Relationships
Roles | Primary Performer: Project Manager | Additional Performers: Analyst Architect Developer Stakeholder Tester
Inputs | Mandatory: [Project Definition and Scope] Iteration Plan Risk List Work Items List | Optional: None
Outputs | Iteration Plan Risk List Work Items List
Main Description
Developing the team is part of executing the project. The project manager is responsible for improving the interaction of team members and the trust among the team, incorporating team building into project activities and empowering the team to make decisions. Management is done by objectives and not by time reporting. The project manager helps the team to meet the iteration objectives by removing constraints and monitoring the progress and work remaining to completion. When the team is falling behind, the project manager helps the team to assess how it can reduce work and still meet the iteration goals. Stakeholders' needs must be continuously met and their issues resolved throughout the iteration. The stakeholders may need to be involved in approving changes and actions that affect them.
Steps
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 [Collaboration Guidance]. 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: Iteration Burndown). Communicating project status is as important as gathering it. Keep the information visible to stakeholders and project team at all times. The [Project Definition and Scope] 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. [*** Suggest rewording the last sentence. It is not good English to begin a sentence with 'Then'. ***]
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 at 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.
More Information
Concepts | Risk Iteration Lifecycle Micro-Increments Metrics
Guidelines | Assign Changes to an Iteration [Collaboration Guidance] [Work Assignment Guidance]
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