Project Management and Leadership

1. Project Management and Leadership

2. Why care about management? • 10% of projects were “successful” between 1998 and 2004

3. Management vs Leadership • Management is using tools and techniques • Leadership is inspiring people to the right thing • Can these succeed? • Poor management with good leadership? • Poor leadership with good management?

4. Leadership: motivating people • Use monetary rewards cautiously • Intrinsic rewards • Recognition • Achievement • The work itself • Responsibility • Advancement • Novelty

5. Define success and failure

6. Management • Empirical project planning and scheduling • Risk management • Metrics-based management against targets • Defect tracking

7. Scheduling • Must begin immediately, even with limited information • A list of tasks • Start dates • Duration • Assigned resources (people) • Predecessors and successors • Getting buy-in from the team • Use historical data and increments

8. Example schedule in OpenProj

9. Scheduling terms • Critical path (in red) • Any delay along these tasks result in a delayed project • Can be found manually, but tools often do this for you • Slack • The amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the schedule • No slack along the critical path

10. More scheduling terms • Resource leveling • Making sure that no person is working above 100% capacity at any point in time • Happens when multiple tasks are scheduled for the same person • Break up a task into smaller, sequential tasks with a dependency between them (i.e. take more time); tools can automatically do this for you • Or, manually add additional resources to the task so no one is working over 100%

11. Scheduling for Agile projects • Do we need to plan, even if we’re only looking a month ahead? • Sure! • Sprint burndown charts • Release burndown charts

12. Sprint burndown chart Story Points Remaining Day

13. Release burndown chart Story Points Remaining Iteration Number

14. Earned Value Management • How much work you planned to have accomplished by now (in dollars or hours) called the Planned Value • How much you have actually spent by now (in dollars or hours), called Actual Cost • The value, in terms of your baseline budget, of the work accomplished by now (in dollars or hours), called the Earned Value! • Budgeted (cost) at completion (BAC) - The sum of all the PVs Idea is to link schedule and cost together to monitor both in the same “units” of value

15. Earned Value Management Example • We’ve budgeted $200 to buy, setup, network, and test a new system • Our PVs are $50 to buy, $75 to setup, $50 to network, and $25 to test • Our BAC is therefore $200 • Right now, we have spent $60 (AC) and have completed the buying phase (EV of $50) • Are we on schedule? • Are we on budget?

16. EVM Example 2 Line is at 16, blue bar ends at 14 Line is at 6 • PLANNED VALUE (Budgeted cost of the work scheduled) = 18 + 10 + 16 + 6 = $50 • EARNED VALUE (Budgeted cost of the work performed) = 18 + 8 + 14 + 0 = $40 • ACTUAL COST (of the work performed) = $45 (Data from Acct. System) • Therefore: • Schedule Variance = 40 - 50 = -$10 • Schedule Performance Index = 40 / 50 = 0.8

17. Scope Creep • The scope of your project is the work you originally planned to do • Scope creep is when more tasks are added, without adding more resources • Happens often. What are some reasons of needing additional tasks? • What is the cause of scope creep (not adding more resources, otherwise we just consider it scope change)?

18. Avoiding scope creep • Joint Application Development • Formal change approval • Defer additional requirements for future versions

19. Management • Empirical project planning and scheduling • Risk management • Another lecture • Metrics-based management against targets • Another lecture • Defect tracking • Another lecture