Project Management

What it is

Effective planning and getting things done efficiently, on time, and at minimized risk.

Why it's important

• Delivers the scope toward the vision
• Identifies and organizes all required tasks
• A realistic plan allows us to prioritize and project resource requirements and timelines
• Effective project management deftly navigates change and mitigates risk
• Consistent project management enables us to more accurately estimate and to build out checklists (and templates) that increase quality assurance

When you need it

• Research projects
• Design projects
• Development
• Release management

How to get it

• Start with yourself: break down your work into tasks, order them, schedule them, make this a daily and weekly ritual.
• For each project ensure you have: a clear, detailed, aligned, and prioritized breakdown of tasks; everything scheduled with dates and dependencies; consistent and regular coordination and communication; regular scope management practices to ensure you are minimizing risk and ambiguity.
• Make a habit of taking notes and organizing them -- these will help you to keep track of requirements, tasks, risks and other elements of project scope. A good project manager has all the information.
• Get comfortable with cutting scope and setting deadlines -- what is essential and what can be postponed? A good project manager whittles the scope down to minimal, but always has a backup strategy for prioritization in case of change.
• Get estimates for everything. Whenever a task is identified, always ask "how long will that take", write down the estimate (this helps to create the timeline), and then manage closely to the estimates to mitigate risk.
• Identify dependencies. Make sure you know what needs to be done before / after each task. This will give you the critical path for the project and help to manage the timeline.
• Identify risk and create backup plans. Make a habit of asking "What could go wrong with this?" and "What would we do if this went south?" Make sure that people are aware of and assigned to the mitigation plans.
• Update the project plan and copy it for future plans. Each project is a valuable record and ultimately a template for similar projects in the future. If you start a plan from scratch each time, you are not learning from the past. Each plan should learn from and be better than the previous.

Resources

• The Checklist Manifesto
• PMBOK

The competency

You are able to take the strategy and break it down into specific projects, tasks, and steps. You are able to manage scope, timeline, risk, alignment, coordinate meetings and the details of the work from research to brainstorming and design, from estimation and development to release and monitoring.

Outputs and deliverables

An ordered, prioritized, vetted, fleshed out, and estimated list of specifications and Jira tickets that provide the necessary instructions and designs for development to execute. The product backlog should always be ahead of dev by months.

• A 6 month backlog, measured in estimated work, as follows (all of which is in Jira):
  • Ready-ready work for the next 2 months. Detailed specs that have answered all outstanding questions, include detailed designs, and have a breakdown of work into atomic tasks that are estimated in story points / days. The total estimates ensure that the respective dev team could easily pull anything off of that prioritized list and stay busy for at least 2 months.
  • Ready to estimate work, totaling 2 months in ROM estimates. Well-defined specs with enough detail and design to be ready for detailed project planning. The project planning has not been done yet, and all we have is an epic in Jira plus the spec and designs to cover the high level flows.
  • Ready for design work, totaling 2 months in ROM estimates. A collection of rough specs (problem defined, general scope outlined, may have some sketches / concepts) that have an early ROM estimate and have been prioritized for design to start diving in and fleshing out.
• A broken down, ordered timeline with dependencies and deadlines -- managed and shown to be on-time, on-quality, with minimized risk, and well-managed warranty / assessments.
• At least one specification per PM per month.
• Weekly demos in production. Each demo shows clear incremental progress toward the monthly releases. It also reveals that not only are you ensuring things get done, but that it is broken down sufficiently.
• Monthly releases. A deployment to customers. Each product swimlane should have one per month. This includes a plan for warranty, monitoring, iteration and assessment.

Outcomes

• ROI in terms of progress toward vision, improved quality, increased adoption, and economic gains
• A reputation (internally and externally) of stability, predictability, reliability