The Art of Project Management

15.2. Elements of measurement

Tracking progress becomes very important in both mid-game and end-game. The larger the team, the harder it is to make the state of the project visible. To make course corrections or adjustments (see Chapter 14), you need to have a clear understanding of what state the project is in both to diagnose any symptoms and to predict how the project will respond to adjustments.

Whatever measurements you decide to use should be made visible to the entire team. In Chapter 14, I suggested that work items are the most important tracking mechanism for mid-game. Here, we'll go deeper into other measurements useful for mid-game but focus on tracking for end-game.

For end-game, you can reuse any project scoreboards used earlier; just make sure that the important measurement is given proper emphasis (drop measurements that don't carry much significance anymore, such as work items). The scoreboard should stay in a visible hallway, and it can be as simple as a big whiteboard that you update frequently or as fancy as a dedicated terminal (conveniently located near the restrooms, break room, or other high-traffic areas) that pulls the most recent data from the network.

15.2.1. The daily build

By making builds of the project each day, you force many kinds of issues to be dealt with in the present, instead of postponing them into the future. Anyone can look at the current build and know immediately what the state of progress is. You can rely less on people writing status ...