TECHNICAL PROJECT MANAGER

PRESENTATION

Alora C. Chistiakoff

The Goal

To consistently and reliably deliver quality, pre-determined features for the company’s product suite on a regularly scheduled basis.

Requirements to meet this goal: Pre-agreed feature list for each release Team-wide communications plan Deadline-driven collaboration ethic Established documentation standards &

practices Transparent change management process Pre-determined entry & exit criteria

The Six Week Cycle Myth

A six-week release cycle is really (approximately) a ten-week project cycle.

Why this distinction is important: Effective schedule management (including resource planning, change, communications, documentation and client expectation management) needs to take into account the time before and after the release. The definition of “project” needs to expand to include the needs and expectations of all stakeholders, both internal and external.

Week1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

R1                                                    R2                                                    R3                                                    R4                                                    R5

Communications Mgmt – Approach

90% of Project Management is Communication

Communications Mgmt – Meetings All meetings have published

agendas, action items & minutes Regularly scheduled meetings,

supplemented with as-needed ad hoc meetings

Planning: feature lockdown, risks & issues, entry & exit criteria agreement, documentation expectations, resource allocation & schedule development

Executing: status, change management & trade-off evaluation, risk & issue management, entry & exit criteria review, documentation collaboration & review, team-to-team handoff & review

Closing: evaluation, unresolved issues, documentation publication

Agenda & Minutes

Productivity

Communications Mgmt – Knowledge Mgmt

Centralized transparent communications forums for capturing on-going activity Regularly published

status reports Published & updated

risks & issues Publicly available

project calendar & timeline

Documentation Management Documentation Requirements

Pre-determined ownership responsibilities (author, reviewers, approvers, etc.)

Centralized, searchable, team-wide repository

Audience-appropriate format & content

Documentation Categories Internal

Product – features, specifications, release notes, training materials Project documents – risks, issues, scheduling & resource planning,

status updates, entry/exit criteria, scope & change log External

Release – features, training materials, schedule, known issues

Change Management

Managing change Understanding &

communicating trade-offs Who gets to decide? Is everyone aware of the

repercussions? Tracking & logging change

decisions Centralized, transparent

documenting of changes & implications

Managing expectations as early as possible Bad news does not get

better with age Communicate early & often

Entry & Exit Criteria

Cannot have “exit criteria” without “entry criteria”

Pre-agreed deliverable, timeline and ownership

Transparent change process, including publication of trade-offs & downstream impact

Decision Checkpoints

Pre-agreed Status updates Risk

review/planning Ad hoc

Risk mitigation Issue management Change

negotiation Trade-off decisions

Questions?