1. Dilbert Scott Adams
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

2. Dilbert Scott Adams
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

3. Dilbert Scott Adams
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

4. When you don’t trust the team’s estimate
Optimists underestimate
Pessimists overestimate (adding buffer)
As PM, what do you do?
Know your team.
Eliminate time buffers on each task
Theory of Constraints (managing your buffers)
Each member gives a reasonable estimate for each task
Make the task length 50% of the estimate
Add 25% of the estimate to a reserve buffer
When a task on the critical path takes longer… use time from the buffer
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

5. Serial Cycle Estimation Trap
Estimating the entire project at the beginning – the Trap!
Instead, start doing something (a task)
Measure it
Identify other “pieces” like it
Use the measurement as the estimate
Serial life cycle projects, use:
Confidence Ranges
Date Ranges
“The schedule estimates are the team’s best guess today…”
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

6. Confidence Range Chart
60% chance project completed by July 1.
No chance the project will be completed at the beginning.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

7. Cone of Uncertainty & Serial Life Cycle
Remaining variability 4x
1.0x
.25x
+400%
Design Complete
Code freeze
System test
Time estimate
Architecture defined
Req’ts baseline
Charter approved
+25%
Continuous refinement: active controls throughout the project needed to prevent cone from widening

8. * “whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time.”
Date Ranges
Best case
The first date you cannot say the project will not be done.
It might! 
Likely case
The date that includes your “fudge factors”.
Worst case (Murphy’s Date*)
Take the “Likely Date” and add some more “fudge”.
* “whatever can go wrong will, at the worst possible time.”
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

9. Accuracy and Precision
Not the same thing!
Precision
Exactness of the measurement (number of decimal points)
Accuracy
How close you are to the estimate
Expresses how you care about is accuracy!
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

10. Separate task sizing and duration
Estimating tasks you have never done before:
Identify size of smallest to largest tasks
Estimate the duration for each size task
(Use a Spike to gather data before estimating)
“The more large tasks you have, the more uncertainty you have.”
Estimate in hours, days, months… what?
Spike: A timeboxed task to gain information about other work.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

11. Getting the team involved
Planning Poker:
Pick a feature
Each member estimates it size
Consensus* … use the number
Outliers … get an explanation
Each member re-estimates size
* Consensus or relative consensus … meaning everyone can live with the number.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

12. Estimating - Tips Estimates are guesses! Beware of optimism.
Tasks take longer.
Estimating smaller chunks of work is easier.
The unit of measure? (person-hours)
Estimation and feedback is essential.
Iterate on the estimates.
re-estimate and replan, re-estimate and replan, …
Given a deadline…
Incremental life cycle: implement and get feedback quickly
Over-constrained project – timebox the phases and tasks.
Too much technical risk – consider a Spike.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

13. Two more tips Use deliverable-based planning for tasks.
Visible/tangible products define milestone completion
Schedule milestones (or iterations) for midweek.
Schedule completion for Friday… automatic slip until Monday
Midweek milestones reveals the amount of unfinished work
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

14. The “How little can you do” approach
How much can you do… translates to:
Get to work, we have massive amounts of work to do.
Forget the schedule.
Costs are not the driver.
How little can you do… translates to:
Understanding the req’ts is key… we want to ensure we deliver value to the customer
Schedule is critical
Cost is important
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

15. The Evils of multitasking
Guarantees your project will be late.
You cannot tell how much the time every person is spending on the project.
You cannot tell if you will have the people when you need them.
What to do… timebox tasks to end on Friday, allowing for downtime and context switching.
“… single biggest contributor to late projects, projects that don’t deliver what they need, and projects that don’t work as well as they need to work.”
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

16. Rolling-Wave Scheduling
Rolling wave plan… continuous detailed schedule of a “few” weeks.
Each week, you add another week of detail.
The 4 week Rolling Wave schedule:
The number of weeks should be tied to the length of an iteration… 4 weeks max.
When you know enough … 2 weeks may be to short a time.
Need enough detail to identify risks.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

17. For the first milestone…
Engage the team:
What tasks are needed to get there?
The “stickies” approach
Define the tasks in terms of “inch pebbles”
Requires breaking work into subtasks
The method for constructing a Work Breakdown Structure
The shorter the iteration, the easier to re-rank req’ts and adapt to changes…
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

18. Avoid the Student Syndrome
Yes… waiting until the last minute to begin work.
Breaks project’s rhythm… especially when interdependencies are affected.
Avoid task estimates of weeks or longer.
Team members should do “inch pebble” tasks.
Everyone has a deliverable every day or so…
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

19. “Defect tracking” and Fig. 8.2
Interruptions
How much time is lost…
PM must protect the team members from interruptions.
Brooks’ Law… management imposed interruptions.
Does “pairing” help or hinder?
Do members have the support infrastructure they need when they need it?
The “builds don’t work” but “it worked on my machine” … 8.12 on page 161
“Defect tracking” and Fig. 8.2
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

20. Prepare for Influence – Page 162
Problem solutions must come from the team.
Know how to ask for help and how to give it.
Know what motivates a team (the team’s WiiFMe).
Share ownership of problems with the team… and openness to other ideas and opinions.
Listen to the team… learn what they need to be effective.
Allow others time to think… don’t push your ideas without time for others to consider.
Collaboration requires the ability to give up your ideas of what to do… to work for the best idea.
Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman