Effective Software Project Management

Tracking Where You Are

To quantify where you are you need to define and track several metrics. In this section I identify several types of metrics that are in common use. This section discusses two perspectives with respect to tracking.

• The first is process tracking, that is, how good is the process we are following?

• The second is practice tracking. That is how well are the project teams practicing the process?

Both of these are discussed in the subsections that follow, along with a discussion of some key individual project tracking tools.

Process Tracking

The effectiveness of your project management process is assessed using a project management maturity assessment measure. A few such assessment tools are available. I have developed my own and used it on several client engagements. It is called the Project Management Maturity Assessment (PMMA). It consists of a number of questions that are categorized by process and maturity level. There are 39 processes and 5 maturity levels, which generates 195 cells in which are found 2–10 yes/no questions. A trained interviewer will usually have to ask about 200–250 questions in order to establish the maturity level for each of the 39 processes. A new instrument is under development that will incorporate the most recent release of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Standards. Figure 38-1 is a typical report from a recent client assessment.

Figure 38-1. Project Management Maturity Assessment report

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The ...