When planning or re-planning a new project keep these handy tips in mind. They will save effort later in the project.
- Do not assign tasks to people outside the team. Make someone on the team responsible for the task.
- Structure the WBS on how progress will be measured (% complete if deliverable for example)
- Introduce new features via Change Requests
- Defect for bugs,
- Suggestion for enhancements.
- If a defect CR will be worked on by multiple people, go ahead and break the single line rule and pass the one person per task rule.
- Schedule defects with one line item on the schedule.
- Schedule suggestions with full development life cycle
- Do a component level responsibility matrix
- Do a Deliverable based responsibility matrix
- Add milestones to the schedule for?
- Code complete
- Feature freeze
- Code Freeze
- Add section to executive status summary for scope changes
- Put risks in categories and summarize the risk for reporting
- Consider milestone chart for executive report
- Review designs before implementation.
- Use use cases to justify design
- Schedule tracking, status report with re-occurring task not a broken task
- Schedule only one person per task.
- Use priority to help leveling.
- Do not use soft dependencies, it is hard to maintain
- Input feature development and tasks in priority order wrt WBS
- Include debug cycles in schedule.
- It is OK to have unlinked build and test tasks that are re-occurring
- Schedule testing by test case
- Have a separate schedule for marketing requirements development managed by marketing. (Hold them to their schedules. They will hold you to yours.)
- Hold re-planning session for major scope changes
- Print schedule at least every other week and post for all to see.
- Find a way to do risk management
- Update schedule daily