Standard Milestones - What you want consistency?

If you're creating your project file from scratch for each project that you're managing, I have a short and simple question for you.  Why?

Step back and take a look at the projects that you're managing.  They all have the same phases (ok, small assumption here, I'm banking on the fact that you're preferred process within your organization is not a seat of the pants process).

1. Someone came up with an idea and sketched out the scope of what they wanted done.
2. Someone decided to flesh out that idea and put some requirements/stories to the idea.
3. Someone got involved and created a design for what the product would end up looking like.
4. Someone took the idea, requirements/stories and design and built the thing.
5. Someone then decided to test the thing to make sure that it worked.
6. Someone had to move it in to the production environment.

Now, maybe your organization is small and that "someone" was the same person start to finish. Or, maybe your organization is a little larger and you have dedicated teams doing all the work.

Regardless, if you are the Project Manager on any size project, it is your job to manage all of this activity.  Now, I personally don't care if you're managing all of this stuff inside of MS-Excel, MS-Word, MS-Project or some other tool.  I have always chosen MS-Project because I like it, others have differing opinions and I'm not going to pick bones about the specific product you use to manage your projects.  I want to talk about the way that you use the tool.

A couple of key points:

1. If you haven't created a template for the projects you manage - that's step 1.
2. If you don't have a set of standard milestones that you manage to within your projects - that's step 2.
3. If you don't pull data out of the plan and measure it regularly - that's step 3. 

As Project Managers we should not only be looking to manage activities within our projects to the 3 standard goals: time, money and resources.  If we are really doing our jobs, we are also trying to eke out efficiencies along the way.  One of the primary ways that you can drive efficiencies within any process is through standardization.

If you standardize the way that you run your projects - the team members that you use for projects know what to expect.  It makes it easier from project to project - they know what information you're looking for, they understand how you want it communicated and through the use of standard milestones, they know what goals you're driving to and what is important.

Just as important, the project sponsor sees a consistent set of milestones and metrics that you are using to drive your projects.  They begin to get a feel for what things are important to know about within the project, they understand how to begin looking at standard milestones to get a feel for whether the project they are championing is on track, whether resources might need to be reallocated if certain pieces of the project are falling behind, their confidence level in the process goes up as they see measurable data vs feel good talking points.

You can find plenty of standardized templates on the web for software development - though I highly advise against just pulling one down from the internet.  In previous posts, you've seen me rail against taking someone's idea of a SDLC process and cramming it into your organization.  The same is true for project artifacts - including the Project Template.  The Project Template should be driven by the culture of your organization.  It should include the phases that your organization and team feel are important, and it should include the tasks and milestones that you feel reflect the work effort that your company and team value.

There is a fine balance between not enough detail in the plan and too much detail in the plan.  Hint - err on the side of simplicity.  Start small and add additional detail as there is consensus across the organization that more detail is needed.

So, you're probably wondering - what's the difference between a task and a milestone?  Good question!

1. A task represents a package of work to be completed within the overall effort of the project - it is a tangible delivery that has resources, time and budget.
2. A milestone is placeholder used to signify that a collection of tasks have been completed and by itself does not have resources, time or budget.  Milestones represent points of interest within the overall SDLC that allow the Project Manager and Project Stakeholders to make judgements on the progress of the overall project.

Now, that you've generated a project template and you've standardized the milestones within your project - what do you do?

Okay, here's the secret sauce - first take a snapshot of the overall plan and establish your baseline schedule.  Only update the baseline if the Project Sponsor agrees that the overall timeline, budget or resources can change - or, if within your process you have identified specific points within your lifecycle where you re-establish the schedule and then reset the baseline.  (Typically, many organizations reset the baseline once final designs have been completed and they have a firm understanding of the development effort.  Within an Agile process, this would represent each sprint.)

Once you've baselined your project - you can begin analyzing activity within the overall project and reference the baseline.  This allows you to:

1. Identify slippage associated with dates - things that get done faster usually aren't a problem.  Understanding when things are going to take longer than expected is when the Project Manager really needs to step in and drive activity.
2. Identify cost differences.  If you're using your project template correctly, you're not only accounting for resources assigned to specific tasks and the timeline for each task.  However, I'd challenge you to go one step further and track all of the equipment and software that need to be purchased for the project within the Project Plan.
3. Identify when resources are over-allocated - this is a huge need within most organizations.  Anecdotally, they can tell when resources are swamped, but they have a tough time proving to management that more resources are needed.  Well, if you're tracking your allocations within your project and your capturing the actual time spent on tasks, you will be able to prove when you're over-allocated.

Hopefully, you've seen my previous postings on establishing and using metrics within the SDLC process.  If so, you know that I'm a big believer in measuring what is valuable to your organization.  If you haven't been producing standard metrics from your Project Plan up to this point, now is the time to start.  You should be able to track progress against your milestones and be able to report that up to the Project Sponsor.  You should be able to compare current milestone dates to baselined dates and report slippage up to the Project Sponsor.  You should be able to identify when people are falling behind and, hopefully, step in sooner to mitigate the overage.

Have you standardized your Project Plans and are you using the Project Plan to drive activity within the overall SDLC?

Tags: SDLC, Project Management, Timeline, Tasks, Milestones, Budget, Template, Management, Projects

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