Any system that claims to measure perform of a project needs to provide:
- Planning of all work scope for the project to completion
- For traditional projects this means a master plan and master schedule for the planned work, the sequence of that work, the dependencies between the sequenced work.
- For an Agile project this means some way of knowing what done looks like in terms of User Stories or Use Cases bounded by a period of time. The planning of an Epic or a Release can be that bound.
- Breaking down program work scope into finite pieces that can be assigned to a responsible person or organization for control of technical, schedule, and cost objectives.
- For traditional projects this means a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for the elements in the final deliverables.
- For Agile projects this means some decomposition during the planning session of higher level customer needs into Stories or Use Cases.
- Integrating work scope, schedule, and cost objectives into a performance measurement baseline plan against which accomplishments may be measured
- For Traditional projects, this means a resource loaded schedule, with milestones or Program Events, the needed accomplishments, and the exit criteria for each Work Package in the schedule.
- For Agile projects, this means a stable development team, some means for forecasting the Story Points that can be produced each iteration.
- Controlling changes to the baseline
- For traditional projects, this means some form of change control where cost, schedule, and technical performance are assessed on the baseline budget and schedule.
- For Agile projects, this means some for of customer communication on the productivity of the Agile team as a result of the change request.
- Using actual costs incurred and recorded in accomplishing the work performed
- For a traditional project, this means capturing costs for labor and materials and measuring these cost against the budgeted cost for the work.
- For an Agile project, this means knowing the cost of the Agile team over it's period of performance, and collecting the for non-labor activities to confirm the project is meeting the owners budget expectations.
- Objectively assessing accomplishments at the work performance level
- For Agile projects, there is a built in advantage - working software
- For traditional projects, defining the tangible evidence of completion is necessary for success.
- Analyzing significant variances from the plan, forecasting impacts, and preparing an estimate at completion based on performance to date and work to be performed.
- When we create a credible plan, with tangible evidence of progress to plan, the measures of variance are always in the same units as the plan.
- With this variance information, the project team can now take actions to get back to GREEN.
- Using this information in the company’s management processes.
- In order to manage anything we need variances.
- Management now needs to take action and correct the work processes that have created the variances.
