Improve Project Management Workflows
Key concepts
Daily stand-up:
Meeting in which attendees typically participate while standing.
The discomfort of standing is intended to keep the
meetings short.
short means
less than 5 minutes
per person.
Only 3 questions:
What have you done yesterday?
What are you going to do today?
Do you have anything blocking you?
Sprint (ˈkänˌbän):
Scheduling system for lean manufacturing.
Created by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota) to improve manufacturing efficiency.
Agile (ˈkänˌbän):
Scheduling system for lean manufacturing.
Created by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota) to improve manufacturing efficiency.
Burndown rate (ˈkänˌbän):
Scheduling system for lean manufacturing.
Created by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota) to improve manufacturing efficiency.
Key Performance Indicator
Kanban (ˈkänˌbän):
Scheduling system for lean manufacturing.
Created by Taiichi Ohno (Toyota) to improve manufacturing efficiency.
Kanban Board:
One of the tools that can be used to implement the Kanban Method for a project.
How does it work?
Each column:
Represents a Status
Must only hold a specific number of tasks at a time
Each sticky note:
Represents a Task by using it's ID#
Has a color that identifies it's type
Tasks move left to right (when things go as expected)
Current Problems
No KPIs available
We can't know if we're progressing
No audit trail
Prevents learning from past experiences.
Slows down or entirely disrupts communication since the only way to get information is to ask the specific person.
Forces communication to be synchronous.
Wastes HOURS per day searching for specific information.
Decentralizes/Duplicates information instead of centralizing it.
Daily standups take
TOO LONG
~4 hours lost
(HALF A DAY OF WORK!)
per PM/week.
PMs doing QA
Wastes countless hours per week.
Innefective since it's not their primary role.
No automation implemented for any of the test aspects.
Lacking standarization of test scenarios (personas, datasets, browser profiles, metrics, etc).
Overlap of testing scenarios done by client.
Estimation of new features
hurts providers performance
(It shouldn't)
No guidelines for PM
Impossible to collaborate with other PMs to improve efficiency due to the differences in workflows.
Each PM uses a different vocabulary which leads to confusion and lost time.
Confusion on what's the right way to act leading to bad decisions or outcomes.
Status update management changes for each PM
No easy way to extract information or see trends.
No audit trail.
Inability for Team/Clients to follow on progress in a fast and easy way.
Time wasted gathering and composing the status update
The Plan
No KPIs available
1. Define progress.
2. Collect info and save to a single, accessible place.
3. Let the computers do the rest
No audit trail
1. Automatically save audit logs to a searchable storage using Integrations.
2. Organize these audit logs by Project.
3. Explain team how to search the logs.
4. Still having doubts? Then ask the question in a way that it can be audited later. Mention this link to whoever needs it.
5. Profit!
Daily stand-ups take too long
1. Each team member has to answer 3 questions:
a) What have you done yesterday?
b) Do you have anything blocking you?
c) What will you work on today?
2. All this needs to happen under 3 minutes per team member.
3. The meetings are recorded for later audit.
PMs doing QA
1. Describe all the pages and functionalities of the project.
2. Create a GhostInspector test suite for each page/functionality you want to test.
3. Whenever there's a new deploy, the site will be tested automatically and results will be sent to the audit log.
4. New features? Create the tests only once, then sit back and enjoy.
Feature Estimation
1. PM listens to client for NEW features/modifications requests during the work week.
2. Each Friday, the compiled list of features needing estimation for next week gets send to Providers.
3. Providers share their estimation efforts after Monday stand-up.
4. Estimation gets reviewed and communicated to client
5. Client approves, work for the week begins.
No guidelines for PM
1. Each PM should list the topics of discussion they think are important.
2. The topics will be aggregated and voted upon.
3. A meeting will be set to discuss the topics and create a short document for future reference.
4. Decisions will be tested and reviewed once per month.
Status update management
1. Review current status updates sent to clients.
2. Allow PMs to add personal notes.
3. Make it VERY SIMPLE for PMs to send these updates.
4. These updates are feed to the Audit Log for later search and retrieval.
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Improve Project Management Workflows
By Franco Laiuppa
Improve Project Management Workflows
Presentation on how to Improve Project Management Workflows. Made for a client but removed all PII. Enjoy.
