Efficient Project Management Tools Overview

1. Project Management Tools Brian Scriber Project Management

2. Agenda: 1 hour of Tools • Quick Background • Why One Tool Won’t Fill the Toolbox • Tools to Explore • Scrum (overview) • XPlanner (demo/walkthrough) • Bugzilla (demo/walkthrough) • Microsoft Project (breif)

3. Background • Brian Scriber • brian.scriber@ieee.org • BS Computer Engineering: University of Michigan • MS Computer Science: University of Colorado • MBA*: 2008 University of Colorado, Leeds School of Business • CSDP, SCJP, SCJD, SCEA, PMP • 13 years implementing and managing projects at different levels • Chief Architect at ICAT

4. Types of Projects Software Development Construction Marketing Municipal Domestic Multi-million dollar Hundred dollar Team Individual Which tool should I use?

5. Aspects of Projects Schedule Management Budget/Cost Management Scope Management Quality Management Customer Satisfaction Change Management Risk Management Documentation Communication Performance Monitoring Contracting Which tool should I use?

6. Aspects of Projects Schedule Management MS Project, XPlanner, Rally, MS Excel Budget/Cost Management Oracle Financials, MS Excel, Quicken Change Management Bugzilla, Jira, IBM Rational (ClearQuest & ClearCase), CVS/Subversion, TeamTrack, MS Excel Scope Management MS Word, Meetings Quality Management TQM, Six-Sigma Customer Satisfaction Survey Monkey, MS Word, Telephone, Email Risk Management Crystal Ball, MS Excel

7. and Scrum Scrum -- Agile, iterative, transparent development process. • Backlog • Constantly changing, prioritized, list of project work (Bugzilla) • The Sprint • 1-week planning period (LOEs, Allocations, Discussions) • 3-week intensive software development • Test-first methodology • Retrospective: Sprint Review • Daily Stand-up Meetings: The “Scrum” • Pigs and Chickens • Yesterday, Today, Roadblocks, Cool • Task and Schedule Status Tool • XPlanner

8. and Scrum: Planning Week • Level Of Effort Estimates: LOEs • Change Requests (CRs) are reviewed and estimated • Sprint week: weekly estimation time • Planning week: open estimation • Maximum of 15 minutes of engineering effort per CR • Accuracy goal was originally 50% but we’re closing in on 15% • Complexity estimation tools and estimate analysis feedback loop • Allocations • 20% of time is unusable • Flow and No-Flow: Peopleware (DeMarco and Lister) • 10% of time is for infrastructure/architecture initiatives • Remaining time allocated to projects • Debt ~10% FTest ~8% ATest ~7% Overhead ~5% • QA Environment Support ~15% • Production Support ~5% • Change Requests: ~50%

9. Why Agile? Eng./Bus. Dissonance Software & Engineering The Business World • Market expectations • Changing business requirements • ROI and strong needs for business planning • “IKIWISI” • Lack complete understanding of app. complexity • High degree of novelty in software development (not an assembly line) • Creative solutions • Difficult to estimate • Elicitation of details requires change management • Lack understanding of all the business drivers

10. and • Projects • Long term (multiple sprints) business or engineering efforts • Example: New External Quoting Portal • Iterations • Iteration = Sprint • 3 week period of development • Each sprint is deliverable to production. Work will be complete. • Story • Story = Use Case or major feature • Task • Atomic unit of production. • At ICAT we limit task duration to 16 hours but shoot for less than 6 hours on 2s (95%) of our tasks (1 day of Flow time)

11. and • Task Type • Planned, Added, Discovered • Task Disposition • Feature, Defect, ATest, FTest, Overhead, Debt

12. and • Technical Requirements for XPlanner • Open Source project • www.xplanner.org • Active community involvement (SourceForge, Blog, etc.) • No licensing fees • Runs in Tomcat (open source servlet container) • Available across your intranet via web browsers • You can control access and permissions • Depends on the MySQL database (open source) • Alternative databases are possible but not really supported. • Hosting and disaster recovery • You will need a dedicated server with high availability • Up to you to back up your db • SOAP interfaces: Standard web service integration • Authentication through LDAP is in development • Setup shouldn’t take more than an hour

13. Admin Perspective

16. Engineer Interactions

22. Management, Business Sponsorand PM Interactions

31. and Bugzilla • Technical Requirements for Bugzilla • Open Source project • www.bugzilla.org • Active community involvement and updates • No licensing fees • Runs under Perl (open source software) • Available across your intranet via web browsers • You can control access and permissions • Depends on the MySQL database (open source) • Hosting and disaster recovery • You will need a dedicated server with high availability • Up to you to back up your db • Authentication through LDAP is available • Setup shouldn’t take more than half an hour

32. Bugzilla Change Request Lifecycle

36. Microsoft Project • This has become de-rigueurfor project managers, but it isexpensive, onerous to use, opaque,and it can get you into more troublethan it will get you out of. • Great tool to layout major dependencies • Temptation to put every activity on the plan • “Gantt Chart Hell” • Resource Leveling: NEVER do this • All of this said, you must be able to use MS Project as a project manager.