A Project Manager must know the status of a given project at

A Project Manager must know the status of a given project at all times. Software projects can be challenging to assess, as you may not have a good way to measure project status. What does it mean if a team has completed 90% of the code? Does that mean that the project is 90% complete?

Place yourself in the role of an executive in a software development firm in charge of numerous projects. You must be able to assess the health of each project and determine when a project is in trouble. Think about the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can help you know how a project is progressing.

Describe one or two indicators that you believe are most important for determining the overall health of the project. Justify why these are the most important. What indicators would you rely on next for projects where your initial indicators are out of range?

In your response to a student’s selection, indicate the next two indicators you would recommend that they consider, and explain why.

Solution

PROJECT MANAGEMENT:

What does it mean if a team has completed 90% of the code? Does that mean that the project is 90% complete?

No, this is just a part of the project. There are many things involved on daily basis to keep the project running smooth.

As I am working in Software firm, let me explain the details what happens once the project came to a software firm.

Initially, the sales and management team put lot of hard word to get the project by giving presentation and participating in biding by quoting less than the competitors. After all these there are agreements on deliverable between two parties.

For a company to deliver project there should be frame work, quality process like QMS (Quality Management system) which are having the ISO standards processes to deliver the project with world class service to their customers.

The project start with the providing cost effective solution to the problem that our customer is facing. We have to provide the software solution to their problem, by gathering requirements and giving the solution. Once all these are set, the project will go into the development phase.

Let come to the point, Key performance indicator (KPI).

To run the project smoothly, our company should have a pre-defined framework. This framework should be in such a way that, if any new project comes into our firm. It would be like plug- play type. So there are some key factors/teams which are defined in that frame work will help to monitor the health and status of the project simultaneously.

What are those factors which are related to KPI?

These are two teams who play a prominent role in our organisation to keep the project healthy and delivering the world class services to their customers.

Project Management team will cover the health checks of the projects which they are handling. What exactly this team will try to get out of this health check? How frequently these checks will be conducted?

Project check up will take few days to evaluate the how well it is performing from the day it started. There are several things were involved on day-to-day activities, As a Project manager (PM) who is the part of the Project management team should step out of the day to day activities and focus on the deliverable promised to the customer and what we delivered so far and they are like.

Project Schedule:

During the agreements phase between two parties, SLA (Service level agreements) . This factor SLA should not be cross for a health project which is on time.

Project completion:

SLA time would be like days/months/years based on the type of project. If it is development project the SLA’s would be like defined on go-live date set by the customer. Based on that the specific team will develop the code to build that application and test the code. All the teams who are working on the application development would involve. The piece of code they develop should be in-line, to achieve that at every phase of development, PM should like bridge between the customer and the development team on day to day base. If any changes in client requirements it should immediately take shape in coding level, to achieve this communication between team/Project manger and customer should be there. After coding the code should be well tested for bugs and should be test run. Once all testing, the application packaging and approvals from all the technical mangers and quality management team and client team will check for whether it reached the expected results. If everything gone hassle free, then it will be go-live. Else, the project may go into other factors like:

Project Status:

In this factor, PM will check for backlogs if any occurred till date in development phase. If any backlogs identified, then he will have action plan to make it back on track by checking up on the resources available to deliver the project on time. And if any lacking in resources he will plan for acquisitions of the resources which lead to CTC.

Cost to Company:

This involves labour cost per month to deliver the project and it should be within the limits and same time should yield profit on that project to the company. How can be achieved? below are some universal formulas in practices.

Metrics:

Planned value (PV):

Estimated cost of you project activities to deliver the quality work.

PV = (the hours left on the project) X (Hourly rate on the labour involved)

Actual cost:

The actual work performed and how much it CTC till date.

Earned value: obviously, it should be greater than cost of actual work performed.

Returns are always expected on the work, right? So what is the return on the investment to develop the project? So this is the key at the end.

Apart from these, different companies will have the defined metrics and frame work. If anything beyond this schedule or it something gone beyond the scope of PM then the Crisis management team will come into picture, which is beyond the context of the above question as of now.

Good Luck.