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1 vote
3 answers
7k views

assigning multiple resources to a single task in MS project - is that right?

I have seen some project plans where a task that spans 80 hours has two resources assigned to it, one at 100% and the other at 50%. Is this correct? Shouldn't the task be broken down to two parts and ...
4 votes
1 answer
178 views

How should I schedule around a resource that may be unavailable for up to 5 months a year?

Background: I am managing a Project where I am responsible planning the construction of a visitor center on the peak of a mountain. The Problem: During reading the brief, I have came across the ...
1 vote
2 answers
4k views

WBS (work breakdown structure) vs SRS (software requirements specification document)

I am new to project management and need a clarification. I want to create the work break down structure for a software project. The definition is that WBS must contain 100% of the work. How can I ...
5 votes
3 answers
323 views

Should defect criticality change based on user needs?

Question Is it correct to assume that the criticality of a defect can change along with the project's progress? If so, when is this acceptable? Background Criticality is one of the indexes we've ...
4 votes
6 answers
2k views

What are Some Tools and Techniques for Communicating Product Updates to Existing Customers?

I am a product/project manager for a product we've created. We have customers using the product, which we are continually updating as it is Web based. What are some tools and techniques for managing ...
0 votes
1 answer
45 views

Seeking professional advice on choosing/evaluating of an IT-contractor [closed]

When choosing an IT-contractor I have only vague ideas on how I can discern the quality of an IT-firm. Below I gather some criteria I have thought about and would like to know if those points are ...
1 vote
1 answer
143 views

Reviewing a difficult project

I have been asked to help a company review a software project that has been very very painful, putting a lot of strain on the client relationship as well as between individuals as well as teams in ...
2 votes
2 answers
325 views

How to plan ahead your resource growth?

Several years ago I was in a startup and they explained to us about roadmap growth. That in the first year a startup should earn XXX money and the year after it should be YYY. the increment in money ...
3 votes
3 answers
371 views

What indicates a good Project Manager?

I get an understanding of what good code is and what skills will be needed on my project. I can assess a software developer's skills and knowledge by looking at his code and asking technical questions....
5 votes
3 answers
852 views

How to make realistic long term time estimations when adopting Agile methodology?

I just started to manage the technical department of a small web design firm. It's the first time I'm faced with such a job and I'm trying to figure out how to improve their project management ...
3 votes
4 answers
2k views

How can I prove on paper that we need more resources for our team?

The higher management in most places seems to have a pigheaded tendency to avoid hiring more resources at all costs. The company has been growing in the last few years and a lot more functionality has ...
7 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to use Agile in a small web agency managing a lot of different projects?

I'm faced with the duty of managing a small design and web agency's (3 full stack developers, 3 designers, 1 help desk, sales people...) technical department. The company is selling quite well (it has ...
2 votes
1 answer
2k views

TFS KanBan, How do you view total work done?

We have recently moved to the TFS KanBan boards and I am loving this organization. Breaking our stories up into smaller, more manageable tasks has been a huge help. We currently size in hours, and ...
1 vote
2 answers
3k views

Can you add constraints to a split task in ms projects?

What if I would have a task A, split into three sections. Could I set a finish-finish relationship between task B and the end of the second section of task A? And if not, what would be a recommended ...
1 vote
1 answer
268 views

ms project shorten summary tasks

I have a number of summary tasks consisting of 4 or 5 subtasks (max 4 days each). These subtasks have dependencies, but the different summary tasks are not dependent on each other. The subtasks are ...
3 votes
1 answer
2k views

Mid Sprint Demo

Mid sprint demo seems to be a popular practice among scrum teams but I struggle to see how it fits in with high performing Agile-Scrum teams. Two sets of questions. When should a formal midsprint ...
5 votes
3 answers
325 views

Test capacity prohibiting stretch goals

In my current team of 3 dedicated testers and 3 dedicated developers we often find ourselves in a scenario towards the end of our sprint (usually the last 2-4 days of our 2 week sprint) where the ...
2 votes
2 answers
249 views

What's a good way for a Scrum team to handle budgets and work with other departments?

In my organization, the developers are using Scrum (which started recently), but the sysadmins are not. We're about to start a large project, and we've been asked for detailed description of our ...
1 vote
0 answers
2k views

MS Project: Percentage of elapsed work time of project

Suppose we have a project, that its progress is not going exactly on the plan (e.g. we have worked on some future tasks and some previous tasks are not completed on the schedule). and also some ...
2 votes
2 answers
195 views

How to handle poor delivery from an Outsourced relationship?

To place in context, I made a document that went to tender where I stated the objectives and timeframe of the product, but because of an NDA I couldn't be explicit with a lot of it in case the ...
1 vote
1 answer
191 views

What can we do without a clear Product Owner or stakeholder on the client's side?

In some of the projects my team works on, there are no stakeholders or it's unclear who the actual Product Owner is on the client's side. For example, we have to write user stories and acceptance ...
2 votes
2 answers
295 views

Reduce Scope or Kill the Project?

My goal is to implement business application. I have 10 days to complete, and my estimation says that i need 40 days. In a team there are two programmers and one programmer-PM. I assume one ...
2 votes
1 answer
134 views

Acquiring knowledge story and splitting to tasks

Lets say in a current project the team asked for training in a particular area to help them in the rest of the project and the product owner agreed and saw the value behind this training so it was put ...
1 vote
2 answers
133 views

What is the best process to model planning estimates?

This is quite a simple request. I have a 150 line Gantt Chart showing project planning to FY end. Approx 30 of the lines are dependencies with Finish to Start attributes. I would like to run ...
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

Is the a Product Owner the business/functional analyst in Scrum?

I would like to know what is the role of the a Product Owner in a Scrum team. I already worked in many Scrum team as developer, tester. In all teams the product owner was always the guy that created ...
2 votes
2 answers
4k views

What are the benefits of hiring a ScrumMaster?

Background: We are trying to adopt Scrum in my current development team. One of the action items is to hire a ScrumMaster to help us in the Scrum implementation. But there are some articles suggesting ...
5 votes
1 answer
533 views

Does Scrum fit PMBOK knowledge areas?

PMBOK defines 10 knowledge areas, "that are typical of most projects, most of the time". Some Scrum processes/artifacts clearly fit corresponding knowledge areas. E.g. Daily Standup is an ...
4 votes
3 answers
1k views

How do you deal with client-related hold-ups in Scrum?

Most of our projects get held up by waiting on client assets. Working under waterfall, we're often on many projects at once and can work on something else while waiting. We really want to do scrum "...
9 votes
3 answers
8k views

How can we apply Agile to a consulting firm

As a consultant working for a consulting firm, planning projects using Agile/Scrum methodology can be quite challenging. Considering we do not work full-time for our clients, it is hard to use Scrum ...
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Documents to create prior to Kick-off Meeting [closed]

We have gotten approval of our Project Charter and have a kick-off meeting scheduled already and I'd like to know what documents do I need to create prior to this kick-off meeting and/or what ...
6 votes
3 answers
1k views

How does a team (new to product and domain) estimate user stories of a ten year old product?

I am the scrum master for one of the products in a software development company. Our team, including me, operates from India. However my product owner is in USA. We are working on the feature ...
0 votes
2 answers
325 views

In Scrum, what is an impediment? [duplicate]

One of the questions in Scrum is What impediments have you encountered? But what exactly is an impediment? Can you give me an example?
5 votes
4 answers
2k views

What can we do with a "mispointed" story in Scrum?

Is it OK to repoint the story at the beginning of the new sprint to reflect the size that we have now discovered it to be so our velocity is more accurate? On rare occasions, our team will work a ...
1 vote
1 answer
1k views

What is the best way to include a "refund money" clause in a project agreement?

I want to write an agreement with a company who is developing software for me. I want to make sure that if the company fails to develop software as agreed they will refund money I paid to them up to ...
1 vote
3 answers
306 views

What are the primary differences when promoted to a Programme Support role out of a Project Support role?

Within a newly formed Programme Support Office, a number of new starts have been asked to evaluate their roles but they are all former Project Support Officers and some are straying into Project ...
3 votes
6 answers
2k views

Estimate hours of work for every user story

In Scrum, is it mandatory to estimate the amount of hours needed to finish every user story before putting it in the Sprint? Or should we use planning poker and use points instead of hours?
2 votes
2 answers
1k views

High Level Budget for Project Charter

How much detail should go into putting together a high level budget for a project charter? For example, should I blindly accept the Suggested Budget for the Project before I even breakdown the tasks ...
4 votes
2 answers
12k views

How to use Jira to indicate blockers in a Kanban system?

We are already using Jira to visualize the work of ~30 people, and it's being rolled out to other teams too, so this number will increase dramatically. One of the enhancements we need, is to be ...
10 votes
5 answers
28k views

What factors should determine a task's priority?

Is it common to assign a task's priority based solely on its due date? For example, is the following system valid for all scenarios? Urgent = less than 24 hours High = Not more than 24 hours Medium = ...
4 votes
6 answers
268 views

Advice on becoming a Project Manager in IT

I have just enrolled on the Open University's Open degree to allow me to pick and choose my modules to tailor a path toward attaining a position in the career I want to pursue. Project management in ...
0 votes
2 answers
287 views

Agile resources for very short projects?

I'm having a job interview tomorrow with a group that typically has projects between 3-5 days in length. Of course, I'm not sure what exactly my duties will be, but I'm more used to projects around 2 ...
16 votes
3 answers
6k views

In Kanban, what should we do about an urgent task?

If at that time, development team is currently at max WIP, then there's an urgent task like critical bug that need to be fixed immediately, do we need to violate the max WIP and allow to do work more ...
3 votes
3 answers
141 views

What is the recommended practice for adding and organizing technical debt for a project? [closed]

I am new to software engineering and looking for someone with agile experience to help me understand what the recommended practice is and why. If this question can be related to a better site please ...
8 votes
6 answers
3k views

What are reasons against cross-functional teams?

I often work in companies where functional departments are rigidly separated. To me this seems inefficient, as adds a lot of communication overhead. Are there reasons why companies prefer this type ...
2 votes
2 answers
661 views

Best practices for robust enterprise level software development (using python Django) [closed]

We are building a software project (using python Django and a bunch of other Open Source technologies). The project is fairly big. To give an idea, it has over 50 templates. Our team is composed of ...
7 votes
3 answers
6k views

Splitting PM responsibility between technical lead and non-technical PM on an agile project?

In practical terms, how do you suggest that a technical lead (me) work with a non-technical PM who is responsible for multiple projects? How should dependencies between stories, and external ...
4 votes
2 answers
1k views

Which guidelines are applicable for a single Scrum Team managing multiple backlogs?

Does the Agile community have recommended processes for a single Scrum Team managing tasks coming in from multiple backlogs? Context and Problem One Scrum Team One Scrum Master Delivering value to an ...
0 votes
2 answers
703 views

Purchase a physical scrumboard? [closed]

Any ideas on where to acquire a pre-drawn physical scrumboard? I want to save the hassle of preparing one and to just buy it somewhere. If there are nice boards like that would also look professional ...
1 vote
3 answers
631 views

Similarities / Differences between BPM and software projects

I have begun working for a company that resell BPM products, for improvement and automation, including small Sw development sometimes. Sadly, they have a colosal rate of failure when estimating time ...
0 votes
2 answers
182 views

Finding the minimum number of functional teams needed to do repetitive tasks

I have a Project Plan in MS Project, its a construction project which has repetitive tasks and multiple gangs. For example: Building 1 Strip Clean Paint Varnish Building 2 Strip Clean Paint ...

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