Client Management Managing Client Expectations Why? How? Agile communication structure Building accountability & trust Communicate your Planning Methods Revisit concept of “Making it Visual” Exercise: See Trajectory w/ Burndown Charts Using a Task Board over Gantt Visual way of communicating plan

What is hard about developing requirements? Why can’t you just ask users what they want and go program the necessary software, build the database, populate the database, and hand over a complete system? Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G

A view of the challenge From Steve McConnell’s excellent text on system development: Rapid Development For information, training, and more books by McConnell, go to his web site: http://www.construx.com/ Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G

Another view of the challenge Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G

Why is determining requirements EARLY so important? Why can’t you just ask users what they want and go program the necessary software, build the database, populate the database, and hand over a complete system? Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G

SMALL RISKS CAN GROW TO BECOME BIG ISSUES AS PROJECT PROGRESSES The challenge is to understand what is needed as early as possible. Errors in analysis create problems in design and implementation. The more time wasted on misunderstandings the higher the cost to the organization. ----- Meeting Notes (10/2/12 15:58) ----- THE FIRST MONTH IS ABOUT REQUIREMENTS AND ANALYSIS. TEAMS THAT HAVE TROUBLE ARE ONES THAT JUMP TO SOLUTION I KNOW WE WANT TO CODE BUT PLAN IS IMPORTANT Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G

Relative Cost to Correct a Defect It is much cheaper to correct a defect before it’s in Production…Why? In Development In Production

Client Management Managing Client Expectations Why? How? Building accountability & trust with Agile communication structure Communicate your Planning Methods Revisit concept of “Making it Visual” Exercise: See Trajectory w/ Burndown Charts Using a Task Board over Gantt Visual way of communicating plan

Client Expectations Tools to manage client expectations and ensure they are successful Agenda Structure  Ensures you cover all states of scope Agendas (w/ time limits)  Better manage time in meeting Daily standing meetings  Increased Feedback Prototyping/Modeling  Gathers quicker feedback Priorities matrix  Client is part of value determination Evaluation Tables  Client part of scoping decision What else?

Client Management Managing Client Expectations Why? How? Building accountability & trust with Agile communication structure Communicate your Planning Methods Revisit concept of “Making it Visual” Exercise: See Trajectory w/ Burndown Charts Using a Task Board over Gantt Visual way of communicating plan

Reminder The most common risk to your project is poor communication With group With client With professor How Agile builds in Accountability Daily Standing (Done, Doing, Blockers) Each Agenda (Done, Doing, Issues, Owners) Be transparent, even with bad news TIP: Agenda must give coherent update. In Prog, Planned, & Risks can’t disappear

Client Management Managing Client Expectations Why? How? Building accountability & trust with Agile communication structure Communicate your Planning Methods Revisit concept of “Making it Visual” Exercise: See Trajectory w/ Burndown Charts Using a Task Board over Gantt Visual way of communicating plan

Communicate our planning methods Tell your client why you’re asking these questions Explain the frameworks so they understand your chosen approach Talk about what we’re trying to accomplish in the charter

Making your plan visual Constantly monitor your plan and short term milestones Trello enables easy access to your plan Agenda hold you and client accountable to short term deadlines

At each team meeting or significant milestone you should check for changes in Triple Constraint Scope Has the scope changed? Did we hit our schedule target date?   Schedule Resources Has something occurred that may impact the schedule? Do we need team members with different skills?

Constantly monitor milestones weekly Lower Priority stuff was scheduled at end so okay to cut. This sprint took 2 weeks instead of 1. Missing this milestone helped team see potential to miss project end date so led team to redefine schedule and focus.

Making your plan visual Constantly monitor your plan and short term milestones Burn tracking tool Chart to visualize the projected timeline and actual timeline to complete the given scope Template available on Canvas

Burn Tracking - Example Burn tracking - in-class exercise with Latinitas Download the burn tracking tool from Canvas Answer the following questions Are you ahead or behind schedule? Why? Are we tracking to catch up? Consider the triple constraint – what are your options in this project? Discuss as a class

Making your plan visual Constantly monitor your plan and short term milestones Burn tracking tool Chart to visualize the projected timeline and actual timeline to complete the given scope Template available on Canvas Using Trello to create an adaptive plan This is how you’ll manage client plans

What is Kanban? Visual plan that uses a card to represent a user story or feature/component of story

What is Kanban? (cont) Plan that’s managed in a task board Follows a simple rule that you only have a feature or user story in 1 of 4 states: Not Started (aka Backlog) In progress (i.e. being developed or fixed) In Test or Review Done (i.e. Deployed to Production) + Typically no more than 4 cards are in progress or test to discourage bottlenecks. + Easier for client to see and understand + Allows for cross over of team roles (e.g. developer can help test features that are piling up “in test”) - Doesn’t show end dates so requires high-level PM - Doesn’t show dependencies in user stories

You must start using Trello for Charter

After charter you’ll build out scope in Trello Example: Each card was a feature and colors used to distinguish each story

After charter you’ll build out scope in Trello Example: Each card was user story comprised of many tasks

Questions on anything? Client Management slides, Day 9, Ch 5 & Tech Mod G