5/30/20161 Iterative Project Management Chapter 2 – How Do Iterative Projects Function? Part 1 Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

2 Basic Philosophy No matter the methodology (and there are many), the most important feature: methodology is iterative and incremental. –Regardless whether use-cases, pair-programming, scrum-meetings, feature-driven development, design by test approach or others is used, an iterative approach will greatly assist in producing predictable results. –Iterative development is characterized by small mini-projects (iterations) designed with a clear set of objectives producing a measurable executable (product) objectively assessed that incrementally advances a product of increasing business value. Lots of keywords in this. –The objective of this approach is simply to maximize chances for project success. 5/30/20162Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

3 Mindset of Project Success “ Chaos” approach claims successful projects are finished on time, within budget, with all the features / functions present. –BUT: Using these criteria, most projects still fail; –with 16-24% succeeding; –And 15-40% ‘challenged’, –and 33-53% failed! Successful: completed on time within budget; contains intended features/functions. Challenged: project completed and operational but is over budget/time and has fewer features than originally intended Failed: project is cancelled before completion. 5/30/20163Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

4 Mindset of Project Success Author claims that a successful project oftentimes facilitates organizational change, which changes ‘success’ criteria. While the ‘above’ criteria are important, the real ‘success’ is determined by the clear benefit to the business as measured and verified by business sponsors! 5/30/20163Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

5 Mindset of Project Success So, we are saying that sometimes providing specific business functionality (we know what this is) may not be as important as delivering business benefit. These are not necessarily the same! 5/30/20164Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

6 Mindset of Project Success “Business Benefit” So what is ‘business benefit?’ While we are certainly interested in projects that deliver business value in terms of functionality delivered, on time, and within budget, ‘business benefit’ itself may differ markedly from project to project and from stakeholder to stakeholder! 5/30/20164Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

7 Mindset of Project Success Business Benefit - continued Business benefit is much more than business value delivered through functionality delivered. A little more comprehensive metric: –“Ultimately a project should be judged upon the value that it delivers to the business that commissions it, the customers that purchase its products, and the users that use them.” So: Given this backdrop, business benefit might also be that: –It was an imperative the application be ‘first to market’ of its kind. –It be a really innovative set of functionality; something really new! –It might be significant additional quality or performance… 5/30/20164Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

8 Mindset of Project Success It’s all about Outcomes! Thus a project manager must understand the desired outcomes of the project are and what business results the product is expected to deliver.  Too often, development teams focus on technical aspects of the project only to find themselves divorced from the “sometimes not too obvious” real business benefit desired by other stakeholders. 5/30/20165Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

9 Success and the Iterative Projectm-1/2 It’s not just the functionality! In iterative development, the project may be adapted to changing requirements as changing understanding of what constitutes success as the project progresses. Poor results may occur if the views of some stakeholders, say the project managers or customers, are divergent from the developers. –An iterative approach helps us avoid this possibility of a project viewed as a failure by some yet a success by others. We need to measure project success by focusing on desired business success and not necessarily blind adherence to some original plan that might focus on pure functionality. 5/30/20166Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development

10 Success and the Iterative Project 2/2 All Stakeholders Involved! So here: each iteration has objectives set by the management team collaborating with the development team (esp on technical objectives) and the customer team (esp where business/requirements – related objectives are defined).  Remember, it is far more important (especially to management / customer) to deliver / test scenario(s), and/or set of implemented requirements or changes resulting in a new release with more functionality than to produce a complete set of analysis and design documents for these features! 5/30/2016Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development 7

11 Evidence of Success Pitfalls: (you may use these to fool yourself) –Use the iterative nature to excuse never finishing anything! –Allow results of one iteration to subvert results of previous iterations. A No-No! Successful project management continuously monitors iterations so that an iteration –Takes a measurable step closer to desired result –Builds upon successes of previous iterations –Reduces project risk The success of a project is measured and becomes increasingly more evident iteration by iteration! 5/30/2016Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development 8

12 Key Characteristics of a Successful Iterative Project Demonstrable, objectively measured progress Incrementally increasing functionality Continually improving quality Continual risk reduction Increasingly accurate estimates Reducing levels of change Convergence on a accurate business solution Let’s look at some of these… On time, on budget, meeting the customer’s real needs. 5/30/20169Iterative Project Management / 01 - Iterative and Incremental Development