Abstract
In the previous chapter, we saw how and why the portfolio team selected the project. It ended with a project manager being assigned to move the project forward, guided by the project charter. Before the actual product construction gets underway, some preparatory work is necessary, which is critical to cultivating the fertile ground for both the business and technical team and sowing a good working partnership between them.
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Notes
- 1.
Here artifact is used as a key document that informs later parts of the project, or members of the project. Interim or working documents are also created, used somewhat like a scratchpad, and discarded, so are not considered artifacts.
- 2.
Agile organizations prefer that an agile team is always in place for forthcoming projects, and work is brought to the team instead of, as is often the case, forming teams around new projects then disbanding them after the project. This book is about PMs trying agile techniques in organizations that have not yet completely embraced all agile practices, so I assume, as a worst case, that new teams are formed for each project.
- 3.
There is an even worse relationship: when the business units duplicate the information technology (IT) services and resources within their own units so that they bypass IT. The business units hire their own software staff to act as “personal programmers” on the whim of the upper management. This kind of fragmentation and vote-of-no-confidence for IT leads to a breakdown in the economies of scale that justifies a centralized IT relationship in the first place.
- 4.
The RAM is a general term, more commonly known as a RACI chart, for Responsible, Accountable, Contributing, and Informed. I think that the alternative CORA is more self-evident as to who does what in a role.
- 5.
If the project uses the SCRUM agile variation of a single product owner, the PM does not need to write a communication plan because it falls to the PO to manage the stakeholders’ expectations.
- 6.
The technical team kickoff meeting is done as part of Iteration 0, but all comments apply to that meeting too.
- 7.
A feature is a rather amorphously defined aspect of the product that contains value to the customer. It is similar to the checklist of items advertised on the back of many product packages.
- 8.
Rough-order-of-magnitude estimate
- 9.
“Ideal days” and “ideal hours” are actually a metric of scope, but because it includes the word “day” or “hours,” it often causes confusion. How to handle this issue is explained later.
- 10.
Scrum calls their first iteration Sprint 1 instead of Iteration 0. The process and goals are the same, but the terminology is different.
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© 2015 Alan Cline
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Cline, A. (2015). Project Startup. In: Agile Development in the Real World. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-1679-8_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-1679-8_3
Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
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