Effective Software Project Management

Project Review Sessions

Within each increment there will be a number of milestone events, as was the case for the linear approach, which has only one increment. At each increment’s milestone events, a project review should be held. The purpose of these review sessions is to ascertain the performance of the project against the increment’s plan. A typical review session will be attended by three or more senior project managers who do not have a vested interest in the project being reviewed, by a manager from the Project Management Office (if there is a PMO), the project manager of the project being reviewed, and any other persons who are associated with the project being reviewed and who the project manager feels would have valid input. Because there will be incremental deliverables in each increment, these are serious sessions. In them the project manager must review the increment plan and the status of the plan. If there are problems, you should have a presentation of them, their cause, and the fix that is in place. Because later increments depend on the successful completion of the present increment, it is critical to the success of the project that delays within an increment do not occur. Just the need to reschedule resources in later increments because of slippages in the present increment is enough to encourage maintenance of the plan. At the next project review it is expected that the project manager will update the reviewers as to the outcome of the fix. The reviewers have ...