Tag Archives: project management

Difference between programme, project, portfolio and product management

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P3M stands for "programme, portfolio and project management". Product management is a closely related discipline and as most software organisations do product development I’ll include it in the discussion.

P3M Levels: programme, project, portfolio and product management

P3M Levels:
programme, project, portfolio
and product management

That bit is simple. The tricky bit is agreeing what a project, product, portfolio or programme is. Projects and products are pretty straight forward but definitions vary quite a lot for programme and portfolio. A portfolio for some people is a set of products where for others it is a group of projects. I have, for example, met a portfolio manager who was responsible for some projects and within the same division met a another portfolio manager who was responsible for the product portfolio of the entire division. Programmes are sometimes seen as simply as a complex project or set of projects, or, more interestingly, as an initiative to deliver business benefit.
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Agile Quality Management

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Quality Management, in a project context, is concerned with having the right processes to ensure both quality product and a quality project. This article describes Traditional Quality Management, Agile versus Traditional Quality Management, Agile Product Quality, Agile Project Quality, Agile Product Quality, Agile Quality Assurance and Control, and Agile Quality Improvement.
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Agile Project Estimating

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Estimates are an essential part of Agile Project Planning.  Software estimation has always been problematic and people have proposed many different ways to do estimating.  Different methods are on a spectrum from formal to informal and from supposedly objective to seemingly subjective.  Different methods also get individuals estimate or groups.  And some methods estimate size and derive effort while others estimate effort directly.  Estimating in the Agile world has settled a certain approach which might be characterised as expert group estimation of size. this article covers Traditional Project Estimation, Agile versus Traditional Estimating, Estimating User Stories, Estimating Tasks, Contingency, and Agile Ballpark Estimates.
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Agile Project Execution

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Executing is one of the five project management process groups in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) from the Project Management Institute (2004).

Project Execution is where you build the project deliverables and hand them over to your customer, i.e. where you build and deliver the software. This is where most of the project effort is invested. Agile Project Planning says what you intend to do, when, and Agile Monitoring & Control helps you stay on track but Agile Project Execution is where you do the business.
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Agile Project Monitoring and Control

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No battle plan survives contact with the enemy

Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke

Life is what happens to you
while you’re busy making other plans

John Lennon

Agile Project Planning tells us what we expect to do, but, to paraphrase the quotes above, plans often turn to custard. The job of the Agile Project Manager is to guide the team to successful delivery despite the challenges the world throws at the project. This article is about monitoring the project against the plan and intervening when we notice things going off track. In particular it covers Traditional Project Monitoring & Control, Agile versus Traditional Monitoring & Control, Agile Project control, Agile project metrics, Agile Project Reporting, and Agile Project Monitoring.
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Agile Roles and Responsibilities

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Each of the Agile methods includes defined roles.  Some have more, some have, less.  DSDM is the only one of the methods that makes a big deal of making role responsibilities explicit but I think this is important. To work effectively as a team people need to know what their role is and the roles of their peers. I have often had to coach teams on the demarcation between key roles on the team – typically the leadership roles, i.e. project owner, agile project manager (or scrum master) and technical lead.
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Agile Change Management

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My background is running Agile projects for external customers in the context of a contract, often fixed price.  That influences my focus on good project management and specifically change management. Change Management is the mechanism to combat scope/feature creep.

Within the Agile world scope change is expected and time is considered more important than functionality. So if something has to give to allow change then functionality/scope loses and time wins. To do this the customer must make Requirements Trade-offs. The Customer directs development in Timebox and minor changes are just accepted. Big changes are handled different depending on whether it is a change to the Release Plan or Timebox Plan.
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Agile Post-project

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Agile Lifecycle Post Project

The Agile Post-Project phase is not really concerned about the project that preceded it, but is instead concerned about the product that resulted.  It is a good idea, but in my experience uncommon, to check that the product meets the business need for which it was created. Often this can only be done some time after the project ends, say 3-6 months.  The Product Owner is responsible for organising the review and accountable for the results.

Agile Project Planning

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No battle plan survives contact with the enemy

Plans are nothing, but planning is everything

Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke

I believe that Agile Project Management provides certainty of delivery. Planning is what lets us answer the question “When will you be finished?”. Planning is, however, just the start of the process. As Moltke pointed out planning is more important that the plan because once you start the project you’ll find the plan is wrong and you have to adapt. All plans need revisiting and you will have to use Agile Project Control, Agile Change Management, and Agile Risk Management to get the promised certainty of delivery.
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