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first, this caused push-back from project personnel. The immediate reaction
was that developing such a document would take too long and negatively
affect project performance. I emphasized that project personnel were already
doing this work except for documenting results (e.g., capturing a white
board diagram, or writing down agreed-to rationale for a decision that had
been verbally discussed).
We e x p l a i n e d t h e v a l u e o f d o c u m e n t i n g w a s t o h e l p p ro j e c t p e r s o n n e l a n d
that most PMPs could be written in ten pages or less taking no more than
eight hours. Some project leaders objected, saying it took them closer to forty
hours to develop a PMP. When pressed, most of that forty hours was spent
on analysis necessary to validate their plan whether they documented it or
not. This included gaining concurrence of real schedule milestones with
stakeholders, and the names of people who would be assigned to key roles
on projects, plus scheduling team meetings.
By training the organization how to develop a PMP and requiring the PMP
on all projects, we were able to institutionalize project planning at BOND.
Guidelines were also created using criteria distinguishing between projects
that required a PMP and “tasks” that only required budget authorization.
The added visibility of project planning through the PMP and improved
communication up the chain through the Senior Management brief resulted
in measurable improvements in the consistency of project performance
observed by both Senior Management and customer personnel. BOND was
successful prior to these changes, but successful projects can always improve
their performance. Refer to Table 5-5 for a summary of key Agile Project
Management Practices Aids. For more information on Agile Project Manage-
ment, refer to [26, 27, 28, 29].
Table 5-5
Summary of Key Agile Project Management Practice Aids
13
Integrated Project Management Plan (PMP) Template
Agile Action Item Guidelines
Agile Schedule Guidelines
Documentation of Team meetings and related rules
Documentation of real risk management expected practices
(e.g., Doorway Risk Management)
13. Many of these aids are addressed later in this chapter.
