A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend. I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am." Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

"You must be a programmer," says the balloonist. The man below says, "Yes, you are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees North latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees West longitude." "You must be a programmer," says the balloonist. "I am," replies the man. "How did you know?" "Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost." Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

The man below says, "You must be a project manager" "I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?" "Well," says the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault." Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Chapter 15 – Completing the Project Managing Requests for Early Release Managing Beta Releases When You Know You Can’t Meet the Release Date Shepherding the Project to Completion Canceling the Project Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Continuous Integration Team members integrate their work frequently, usually each person integrates at least daily - leading to multiple integrations per day. Each integration is verified by an automated build (including “smoke test”) to detect integration errors as quickly as possible. Many teams find that this approach leads to significantly reduced integration problems and allows a team to develop cohesive software more rapidly. http://martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Early Release Methods, but… How do you turn a serial life cycle into a staged delivery cycle? How do you manage the coding phase? The answer is … what would you say? The Sutherland (Scrum) video… Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Alpha Testing A very early version of a software product that may not contain all of the features that are planned for the final version. Typically, software goes through two stages of testing before it is considered finished. Alpha Testing, often performed only by “users” within the organization developing the software. Beta Testing, generally involves a limited number of external users. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Beta Testing A test for a computer product prior to commercial release. Beta testing is the last stage of testing, and normally can involve sending the product to beta test sites outside the company for real-world exposure or offering the product for a free trial download over the Internet. Beta testing is often preceded by a round of testing called Alpha testing. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Managing Beta Releases Beta: purpose Beta: customer selection Beta: entry criteria Beta: exit criteria Overall Beta: schedule Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

When you cannot meet the release date! Review the release criteria (do you have any?) The “done” criteria (Sutherland video): Production ready: Feature complete Code complete No known defects Approved by product owner Production ready Decide how long it will take to finish a minimal set of features. Change development to one feature at a time: Develop Integrate Test Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Slipping a week each week is hell! “Take no small slips.” Slipping a week each week is hell! Find out what is causing the delay! You are late… get everyone's attention to make sure the team is not interrupted & remains focused. Replan… back to the stickies! You want inch-pebble planning (which requires a WBS) Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Estimating System Test time If you have been using “Test Driven Development” and have integrated system testing into each iteration, how much system testing do you have at the end? What should you expect for a serial project? Why? Also estimate “time to fix”. A 9-day test and fix cycle Testing cycle 6 days Time to fix 3 days Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

What to do when you don’t have enough time? You can not accomplish the original testing planned! Develop a plan of attack Exploratory (but strategic) testing Rank order what to test Plan to test the high value parts first Also explain what could go wrong Critical bugs identified that cannot be fixed Bugs may be missed that will be found by customers Bug identified that prevents testing a particular area Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Evaluate progress each week. If fixes have been made, plan completion for week 4. If fixes are not made, continue into week 5. Week 5… if bugs are not fixed continue into week 6 Week 6… report status/progress. “… in a pickle, where you don’t have enough time to test everything, use timeboxing to … evaluate how little you can do and still deliver something of value” Why does system testing takes so long at the end of the project? “… not integrating testing into the project as the project proceeded.” Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Managing the “end game” Trade-offs… end up taking on “technical debt”. Defect Triage – assessing each defect and fixing what is necessary. Point Releases [common] A minor releases of a software project, especially one intended to fix bugs or do minor cleanups rather than add features. The term implies that such releases are relatively frequent, and generally used with respect to Open Source projects. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

All involved … plan & pay for the time The retrospectives Five step approach: Set the stage Gather the data Generate insights Decide what to do Close the retrospective A plan! All involved … plan & pay for the time http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqtPZYigfNI First 18 min (total 51) Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

“Celebrations have to fit the people on the project.” Plan to celebrate Why? What does it accomplish? What form should it take? “Celebrations have to fit the people on the project.” Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Professional ways to stop work! Explain to the people on the project why you're canceling the project and what happens to them. People want to know that you appreciate their efforts. And they want to know what work they'll be doing now. Give people time to clean up their work before starting on their new work. That means checking in the code that's checked out with comments that explain the state of the code, or noting on a design which alternatives were under discussion, or which tests were or were not completed. Cleaning up work is not the same as finishing up work… this step should take less than a day to perform. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

It’s all over… Cancel all meetings associated with the project. Once people clear their schedules of these project-related meetings, they'll see other time they have available for the new work. Assign someone to handle the inevitable questions about the canceled project, preferably someone high up in management. If a technical person has the project information, he or she might start working on it again. If a manager is assigned to be the point person, the manager is less likely to start working on the project. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman

Canceled Project… If you're canceling a project that's had some substantial work (sometimes as little as a few weeks or more), take the time to perform a project retrospective and see what people learned from this project. Start people on their new project as soon as they've cleaned up their work. Appreciate each person for the work they performed. Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Johanna Rothman