Manage It!

Book description

Your project can't fail. That's a lot of pressure on you, and yet you don't want to buy into any one specific process, methodology, or lifecycle.

Your project is different. It doesn't fit into those neat descriptions.

Manage It! will show you how to beg, borrow, and steal from the best methodologies to fit your particular project. It will help you find what works best for you and not for some mythological project that doesn't even exist.

Before you know it, your project will be on track and headed to a successful conclusion.

Table of contents

  1. Manage It!
    1. Copyright
    2. For the Best Reading Experience...
    3. Table of Contents
    4. What readers are saying about Manage It!
    5. Foreword
    6. Preface
    7. Chapter 1: Starting a Project
      1. Define Projects and Project Managers
      2. Manage Your Drivers, Constraints, and Floats
    8. With Too Many Constraints, You Decide
      1. Discuss Your Project Constraints with Your Client or Sponsor
      2. Decide on a Driver for Your Project
      3. Manage Sponsors Who Want to Overconstrain Your Project
      4. Write a Project Charter to Share These Decisions
      5. Know What Quality Means for Your Project
    9. Chapter 2: Planning the Project
      1. Start the Wheels Turning
      2. Plan Just Enough to Start
    10. Make Your Planning Empirical, Not Predictive
    11. Start with the End in Mind ( Principle-Centered Leadership  [Cov91 ] )
      1. Develop a Project Plan Template
    12. The Less You Know…
    13. Beware of Early Detailed Schedules
      1. Define Release Criteria
      2. Use Release Criteria
    14. Chapter 3: Using Life Cycles to Design Your Project
      1. Understanding Project Life Cycles
      2. Overview of Life Cycles
    15. Code and Fix Is Never a Useful Life Cycle
      1. Seeing Feedback in the Project
      2. Larger Projects Might Have Multiple Combinations of Life Cycles
      3. Managing Architectural Risk
      4. Paddling Your Way Out of a Waterfall
      5. My Favorite Life Cycles
    16. Chapter 4: Scheduling the Project
      1. Pragmatic Approaches to Project Scheduling
    17. Projects Require Both Plans and Schedules
    18. Timebox Initial Planning
      1. Select from These Scheduling Techniques
      2. Start Scheduling with a Low-Tech Tool
    19. Late Projects Don’t Make Up Time; They Get Later
    20. Chapter 5: Estimating the Work
      1. Pragmatic Approaches to Project Estimation
    21. The Schedule Is the One Way the Project Will Not Proceed
    22. Estimates Need Accuracy, Not Precision
      1. Milestones Define Your Project’s Chunks
    23. Use Deliverable-Based Planning for Tasks
    24. Schedule Milestones (or Iterations) Midweek
      1. How Little Can You Do?
      2. Estimating with Multitasking
      3. Scheduling People to Multitask by Design
      4. Using Rolling-Wave Scheduling
      5. Deciding on an Iteration Duration
      6. Estimating Using Inch-Pebbles Wherever Possible
    25. Avoid Micromanaging with Inch-Pebbles
    26. Chapter 6: Recognizing and Avoiding Schedule Games
      1. Bring Me a Rock
      2. Hope Is Our Most Important Strategy
      3. Queen of Denial
      4. Sweep Under the Rug
      5. Happy Date
      6. Pants on Fire
      7. Split Focus
      8. Schedule Equals Commitment
      9. We’ll Know Where We Are When We Get There
      10. The Schedule Tool Is Always Right, or Schedule Dream Time
      11. We Gotta Have It; We’re Toast Without It
      12. We Can’t Say No
      13. Schedule Chicken
      14. 90% Done
      15. We’ll Go Faster Now
      16. Schedule Trance
    27. Chapter 7: Creating a Great Project Team
      1. Recruit the People You Need
    28. Beware of PowerPoint Architects
      1. Help the Team Jell
      2. Make Your Organization Work for You
      3. Know How Large a Team You Need
      4. Know When to Add More People
      5. Become a Great Project Manager
      6. Know When It’s Time to Leave
    29. Chapter 8: Steering the Project
      1. Steer the Project with Rhythm
      2. Conduct Interim Retrospectives
      3. Rank the Requirements
      4. Timebox Requirements Work
      5. Timebox Iterations to Four or Fewer Weeks
    30. Use the Divide-by-Two Approach to Reduce Iteration Size
      1. Use Rolling-Wave Planning and Scheduling
    31. Build Replanning into the Project Schedule
      1. Create a Cross-Functional Project Team
      2. Select a Life Cycle Based on Your Project’s Risks
      3. Keep Reasonable Work Hours
      4. Use Inch-Pebbles
    32. Help Project Team Members Avoid Student Syndrome
      1. Manage Interruptions
      2. Manage Defects Starting at the Beginning of the Project
    33. Chapter 9: Maintaining Project Rhythm
      1. Adopt or Adapt Continuous Integration for Your Project
      2. Create Automated Smoke Tests for the Build
      3. Implement by Feature, Not by Architecture
      4. Get Multiple Sets of Eyes on Work Products
      5. Plan to Refactor
      6. Utilize Use Cases, User Stories, Personas, and Scenarios to Define Requirements
      7. Separate GUI Design from Requirements
      8. Use Low-Fidelity Prototyping as Long as Possible
    34. Chapter 10: Managing Meetings
    35. Seek and Destroy Time-Wasting Meetings
      1. Cancel These Meetings
      2. Conduct These Types of Meetings
      3. Project Kickoff Meetings
      4. Release Planning Meetings
      5. Status Meetings
      6. Reporting Status to Management
      7. Project Team Meetings
      8. Iteration Review Meetings
      9. Troubleshooting Meetings
      10. Manage Conference Calls with Remote Teams
    36. Chapter 11: Creating and Using a Project Dashboard
      1. Measurements Can Be Dangerous
    37. Use Multidimensional Measurements to Assess Project Progress
      1. Measure Progress Toward Project Completion
    38. Velocity Charts Are the Single-Best Chart
      1. Develop a Project Dashboard for Sponsors
      2. Use a Project Weather Report
    39. Chapter 12: Managing Multisite Projects
      1. What Does a Question Cost You?
      2. Identify Your Project’s Cultural Differences
      3. Build Trust Among the Teams
      4. Use Complementary Practices on a Team-by-Team Basis
    40. Manage for Results
      1. Look for Potential Multisite Project and Multicultural Problems
      2. Avoid These Mistakes When Outsourcing
    41. Chapter 13: Integrating Testing into the Project
      1. Start People with a Mind-Set Toward Reducing Technical Debt
      2. Reduce Risks with Small Tests
      3. TDD Is the Easiest Way to Integrate Testing into Your Project
      4. Use a Wide Variety of Testing Techniques
      5. Define Every Team Member’s Testing Role
      6. What’s the Right Developer-to-Tester Ratio?
      7. Make the Testing Concurrent with Development
      8. Define a Test Strategy for Your Project
      9. System Test Strategy Template
      10. There’s a Difference Between QA and Test
    42. Chapter 14: Managing Programs
      1. When Your Project Is a Program
      2. Organizing Multiple Related Projects into One Release
      3. Organizing Multiple Related Projects Over Time
      4. Managing Project Managers
    43. Manage Cross-Program Schedule Changes with Stickies
      1. Creating a Program Dashboard
    44. Chapter 15: Completing a Project
      1. Managing Requests for Early Release
      2. Managing Beta Releases
      3. When You Know You Can’t Meet the Release Date
      4. Shepherding the Project to Completion
      5. Canceling a Project
    45. Chapter 16: Managing the Project Portfolio
      1. Build the Portfolio of All Projects
      2. Evaluate the Projects
      3. Decide Which Projects to Fund Now
      4. Rank-Order the Portfolio
      5. Start Projects Faster
      6. Manage the Demand for New Features with a Product Backlog
      7. Troubleshoot Portfolio Management
    46. Appendix 1: More Detailed Information About Life Cycles
      1. Serial Life Cycle: Waterfall or Phase-Gate
      2. Iterative Life Cycle: Spiral, Evolutionary Prototyping, Unified Process
      3. Incremental Life Cycle: Staged Delivery, Design to Schedule
      4. Agile Life Cycles
    47. Appendix 2: Glossary of Terms
    48. Bibliography
      1. You May Be Interested In…

Product information

  • Title: Manage It!
  • Author(s): Johanna Rothman
  • Release date: June 2007
  • Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
  • ISBN: 9780978739249