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technology continues to grow, it is always good practice to stay

current with available project management software (PMS) and use the

tools that are the most fitting for your company’s business practices

Recently

, you learned about project management software (PMS)

applications you can use to help manage a project efficiently. You have

also been exploring some of these tools and applications. In this

activity, you will identify one PMS tool that you t

hink can be used to

track and monitor the XYZ Business Workflow project efficiently. Keep

in mind that in Project Two, you will need to create a project schedule

and generate a Gantt chart.

For your initial post, answer the following questions:

Choose one tool and describe its features and available options.

Include a short description of the tool and its features and provide

a link, if possible. What do you think are its pros and cons?

If you are currently using the tool

or have used the tool in the

past, discuss your experience. If the tool is new to you, describe

how the tool could be useful in managing projects.

List one or two other tools you tried and did not choose for this

project. Why did you decide not to use thi

s tool?

Review

other tools you might think

. Are they tools you tried or

worked with already?

Do they have all the features you were looking for when selecting

your tool? What do you like or dislike about

the tool?

As technology continues to grow, it is always good practice to stay

current with available project management software (PMS) and use the
tools that are the most fitting for your company’s business practices
.

Recently
, you learned about project management software (PMS)
applications you can use to help manage a project efficiently. You have
also been exploring some of these tools and applications. In this
activity, you will identify one PMS tool that you t
hink can be used to
track and monitor the XYZ Business Workflow project efficiently. Keep
in mind that in Project Two, you will need to create a project schedule
and generate a Gantt chart.

For your initial post, answer the following questions:

Choose one tool and describe its features and available options.
Include a short description of the tool and its features and provide
a link, if possible. What do you think are its pros and cons?

If you are currently using the tool

or have used the tool in the
past, discuss your experience. If the tool is new to you, describe
how the tool could be useful in managing projects.

List one or two other tools you tried and did not choose for this
project. Why did you decide not to use thi
s tool?

Review
other tools you might think
. Are they tools you tried or
worked with already?

Do they have all the features you were looking for when selecting
your tool? What do you like or dislike about

the tool?

As technology continues to grow, it is always good practice to stay
current with available project management software (PMS) and use the

tools that are the most fitting for your company’s business practices.

Recently, you learned about project management software (PMS)

applications you can use to help manage a project efficiently. You have
also been exploring some of these tools and applications. In this

activity, you will identify one PMS tool that you think can be used to

track and monitor the XYZ Business Workflow project efficiently. Keep
in mind that in Project Two, you will need to create a project schedule

and generate a Gantt chart.

For your initial post, answer the following questions:

 Choose one tool and describe its features and available options.

Include a short description of the tool and its features and provide

a link, if possible. What do you think are its pros and cons?

 If you are currently using the tool or have used the tool in the

past, discuss your experience. If the tool is new to you, describe

how the tool could be useful in managing projects.

 List one or two other tools you tried and did not choose for this

project. Why did you decide not to use this tool?

 Review other tools you might think. Are they tools you tried or

worked with already?

 Do they have all the features you were looking for when selecting

your tool? What do you like or dislike about the tool?

Module Five: Project Execution

As their team works through the Execution stage, the project manager collects information to compare project progress to the baselines and standards they created during the Planning stage. They will
form, develop, and work with a project team, applying change control, performance reporting, and other methods for reviewing project progress. Additionally, the team will keep an eye out for any new
risks that could result from events both within the project and outside the project or organization.

Learning Outcomes

After completing this module, you should be able to:

1. Form, develop, and lead project teams
2. Compare project plans to progress
3. Review performance and adjust project work as needed
4. Address change as it occurs
5. Complete a project status report
6. Report performance to pertinent stakeholders
7. Keep a project on track

5-1

Module Five Pre-test

Click “Next” to access the Module Five Pre-test

5-2

Executing the Project Work

During the Execution stage of a project, the project manager and their team will begin to see the deliverables take shape as they complete the actual project work. The project manager must work with
their team to direct and complete the activities they prepared for in the Planning stage. As the team completes their work, the project manager will track their performance in creating results; the manager
will then use this performance information in the Monitoring and Controlling stage to guide and supervise the team’s work.

Executing essentially encompasses all of the actions needed to complete the work defined in the project’s scope statement. Typical Execution tasks include:

Click on each of the arrows below for more information.

Creating project deliverables and performing activities to meet project requirements

Managing and coordinating project resources

Staffing and managing teams and training team members

Managing project communication channels and distributing relevant project information

Generating data related to project cost, schedule, quality, and progress for comparison to baselines

Making changes and adjustments to project plans and the project environment

Execution is often the longest portion of a project. On an S-curve, the Execution stage is the steepest part of the curve where project resources—and, therefore, the project budget—are used at the
fastest rate.

The Project Manager as a Communicator

In an ideal world, the preparation the project manager did in the Planning stage would free them from having to spend a lot of time replanning during Execution. The project manager would then just be
ensuring that project activities are being completed as planned.

But in the real world, the project may not work as hoped, even with the best-laid and most comprehensive plans. Activities may move faster or slower than expected, so project work will need to be

adjusted. Variances may affect the project plan and require analysis and appropriate response.

As issues like these occur, it is very important to acknowledge them and to convey reactions and responses to appropriate stakeholders. By distributing important information quickly and succinctly to the
right stakeholders, the project manager will ensure that key project participants are informed of project issues and will not be surprised by adjustments and results.

The Project Manager as a Leader

It is also during project execution that the skills of a manager are the most visible. When a team is executing project work, conflicts and interpersonal issues may arise that require the project manager to
use their people skills to manage and resolve. They may also need to rely on these skills to manage team dynamics and inter-organizational relationships. And they’ll need to ensure that team members
gain experience and new skills that will help them progress along their career paths. It is here, in Execution, that the project manager has to lead the team in completing their work and achieving results
instead of simply managing their output.

The Execution stage of the project can be challenging but can also be very rewarding. Here, the team will be implementing the plans that they prepared, putting their hard work into action. They’ll
complete the objectives set forth in the project charter and create the unique results that the project was designed for. The project manager will also see personal progress and accomplishments as they
help their team members grow and flourish.

5-3

The Project Journal

Throughout a project, a project manager (and team members, too) should record their observations in a project journal. The project journal is a notebook or work document that a
project manager can use at the end of a project or phase (in project reviews and retrospectives) to remind themselves of the good and bad things that happened during the project.
The journal can be as formal or informal as needed as long as it serves its purpose—to remind the project manager and project team of any issues they encountered as they worked
on the project.

Capturing Data in Real

Time

Many project participants wait until the end of a project to try to collect and collate the lessons they learned on the project. But looking back on the project inevitably leads to missed
information and opportunities to improve projects. By recording this information as it happens, the project team will have a more complete reference to work from to improve future projects and project
work.

The Journal Content and Format

Some teams develop specific forms or templates to use in their journals, while others just use notes and bulleted lists to track information. Whatever format practitioners use, it should be efficient enough
to capture important information without causing undue hardship to the person who is capturing and documenting the project details.

The project manager should ask all project participants to consider keeping a project journal to ensure full coverage of all project angles and perspectives. Including as many people as is feasible
guarantees that multiple viewpoints will be heard and ensures that details about issues will be uncovered, recorded, and better understood because the people closest to the work will be the ones
tracking the issues and improvement opportunities related to it.

It will also be helpful to record information from conversations that project participants have with external resources or stakeholders. Because these external resources may not be involved in
retrospectives or lessons learned meetings, having someone on the project team capture this information ensures that this important data will not be lost at project end.

5-4

What is a Team?

Project managers don’t execute projects in isolation; they need the help of others to complete objectives and fulfill requirements. The vast majority of project work is done by a collection of people who
work together to achieve goals and meet expectations. But a team is more than just a simple panel of talent; it is an intertwining of skills and interdependencies with a common purpose and a shared
understanding.

Any discussion of teams should start with a clear definition of terms. A group can be defined as two or more persons interacting with each other, such that each one is influenced by the other. In contrast,
a team has four necessary characteristics: complementary skills, the pursuit of a common goal, a shared approach and performance measurements, and mutual accountability.

Click on the next and previous buttons to progress through the slideshow.

Slide 1

Complementary Skills:
Individual members possess or obtain technical, functional, problem-solving, decision-making, and interpersonal skills required by the team as a whole.

Slide 2

Pursuit of a Common Goal:

The focus of the entire team at all times is the team’s shared goal. A team must have a shared goal.

Slide 3

Shared Approach and Performance Metrics:
Team members share a common approach to their work and track their progress through shared performance metrics.

Slide 4

Mutual Accountability:
Each team member holds him or herself accountable for their work while also holding fellow team members accountable for their work. This requires the commitment and trust of all team
members.

Team Classifications

There are many types of teams, most often classified according to what they do. Some of the more common team types are described in the accordion below.

Click on each of the headings below for more information on common types of teams.

Quality Circles
Quality circles are small groups of employees from a given work area who meet regularly to investigate quality problems and recommend solutions.

Work Teams
Work teams are generally permanent teams that actually make a product or provide a service. Work teams differ from work groups insofar as the entire work team decides how to do the work.

Problem-solving Teams
Problem-solving teams are temporary teams put in place to work on a specific problem facing an organization and to make recommendations for others to implement.

Management Teams
Management teams are teams of managers who, in many cases, coordinate work teams. Management teams coach work teams to become self-managing or self-organizing. They also
coordinate efforts between work teams.

Product Development Teams
Product development teams are cross-functional teams tasked with creating new products and services.

Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are teams that collaborate via electronic communication (for example, videoconferencing or email). Virtual teams may be very efficient, as face-to-face meetings can be kept to a
minimum, travel time reduced, and communications facilitated through different technologies.

Self-organizing Teams
Self-organizing teams are teams that recognize that they are responsible for managing and completing their own work, with minimal guidance and direction for authority figures.

Developing a Team, Not a Group

A project leader’s key responsibility is to develop a team from a group. The leader must incorporate team characteristics into the group’s dynamic through specific, targeted actions, as described in the
table below.

5-5

Forming the Project Team

Building a strong and effective project team starts by taking enterprise environmental factors (such as organizational structure and culture, existing human resources, personnel administration policies,
and marketplace conditions) into account. The project manager must also ensure, throughout the life of the project, that the team environment is positive and productive.

One of the project leader’s first tasks, at the beginning of the project, should be to develop a plan for managing the project’s team members and human resources. While planning team management, the
project manager should define roles, authority, responsibilities, competency, and project organization charts. Here are some basic definitions of these terms:

Team Characteristics Leadership Action
Team members have a shared understanding of how to perform their
roles.

The team leader should help define and communicate team roles.

Teams have a clear understanding of what constitutes the team’s “work”
and why that work is important.

The team leader must clearly articulate what the team needs to accomplish and why the team’s success is significant to the
organization.

Team members can describe what the team needs to achieve, as well
as the norms and values that will guide them.

As a team is forming, it can be useful to hold a meeting where the team collectively discusses the values that are important to
them and agrees on ways of working.

Teams have a spirit that shows a sense of bonding and camaraderie. The team leader should initiate team development activities. These may be formal or informal in nature, and they should help
individuals begin thinking more with the frame of “we,” rather than “me” or “I.”

Project Team Assignments

Team management planning also involves documenting project team assignments. These documented assignments may include the following information:

Click on each of the numbered boxes below for more information.

How and when project team members will be acquired

The criteria for releasing team members from the project

Training needs

Plans for recognition and rewards

Compliance considerations and safety issues

The impact of project assignments on the rest of the organization

Staffing the Project

Once team management planning is complete, the project manager then will need to compile a project team. But the process of putting together a team may not be easy—human resources, like most
other resources on a project, are limited and may have to be shared with other departments or projects. In addition, team members may not possess the necessary skills to complete needed activities, so
those skills will need to be procured or acquired in some form. But for the project to be completed successfully, the project manager will have to ensure that an effective team can be created, with people
whose skills and abilities will contribute the most to achieving the project’s goals.

Putting together and managing a project team is a multidimensional activity. It involves:

In addition, there are constraints that will affect the project and its roles and responsibilities. For example, a weak matrix organization may grant the project manager less authority; there may be union
contracts that can hamper or limit staffing choices; or budgetary constraints may limit travel or staffing. All of these factors will need to be taken into account as the project manager completes the project
roster.

Negotiating for Services

Even after deciding who he or she would like to have on the team, the project manager may need to negotiate for their services—with functional managers (in a functional organization) or other project
managers (in hybrid or projectized organizations). This negotiation should ideally be done face-to-face, with a copy of important project documents (like the project charter) sent to the other negotiating
party in advance. (An email summarizing the project’s sponsor, intent, objectives, duration, and time frame can also be used.) The project manager might also specify the name(s) of potential team
candidate(s) or their required skill sets. Negotiations should be done in good faith, with a win-win result as the goal of both parties. If the other party in the negotiation responds unenthusiastically to the
request, the project manager may want to strategize possible compromises, including the replacement of an employee pulled away, or some other compensatory mechanism.

5-6

Developing a Project Team

Project managers must cultivate the project team by fostering dynamic environments of collaboration, open communication, competency, and diversity. This process can include formal and informal
training, rewards and recognition, and challenges and opportunities for the team to overcome. Project managers should guide and develop the team from beginning to end, and they should provide
motivation and support for the project team to efficiently perform and complete project objectives.

The Project Manager’s Toolbox

Before the development needs of a team member can be adequately addressed, his or her existing skills must be assessed, and then strategies will need to be developed to fill any gaps that may be
found. This is usually accomplished by reviewing performance assessments that contain specific, predetermined criteria set forth early in the project. Relevant criteria may include competence in the
technical-, schedule-, and budgetary-based aspects of the project, as well as continuing education accomplishments and improvement activities.

Click on each of the headings below for more information.

Colocation
When teams are colocated, it means that they are occupying the same physical workspace. This can enhance team performance and development. Colocation can exist for the duration of a
project, or at specified events, such as certain meetings or strategic times. Shared workspace can increasingly foster a sense of commitment and understanding among team members.

Virtual teams
As technology continuously improves and is adapted in the workplace, traditional team structures are no longer the only option. Virtual teams can cut costs and provide access to individuals that
may have otherwise been unable to contribute to a project.

Ground Rules

It is important for a project manager to set ground rules. Ground rules can help to articulate differences and provide accommodations for situations that may arise when team members do not
know each other very well or when they come from different cultures and backgrounds.

Communication technology
Communication technology can strengthen team bonds and performance in both virtual and colocated settings. Communication technology enables team members to communicate, share and
collaborate, and organize project activities.

Interpersonal and team skills

Interpersonal and team skills (i.e., “soft skills”) are important qualities for project managers to possess to manage and lead their team successfully. Important interpersonal and team skills while
developing a project team include:

Conflict management for resolving conflicts in a constructive and timely manner;
Influencing to gather relevant information and reach favorable agreements;
Motivation for empowering teams and encouraging them to perform at an optimal level;
Negotiation to build trust and come to a consensus on project and team needs; and
Team building to transform teams into high-performing, efficient, interdependent units.

Recognition and rewards
To keep teams motivated and on-task, desirable behavior can be rewarded and recognized. Project managers should recognize and reward the team and individual members throughout the
duration of the project life cycle. These rewards may be financial, but they are not always.

Training

Sometimes team members need coaching or training in a specific area. Training and coaching don’t have to be formal processes; unplanned observations, teaching, and reviews can provide
informal opportunities for development and improvement. Training and development opportunities can occur whenever and wherever needed.

Various training activities, formal and informal, can take place over the course of the project. The purpose of training is to improve the skills and competencies of team members and enhance
their overall project performance. Training can be planned or unplanned, and it can be provided in-house or externally. Organizations should take special care to ensure that training outcomes
can be measured in an efficient manner, to guarantee that training activities strengthen employee skill sets and produce results as expected.

Individual and team assessments
Over the course of a project life cycle, project managers will assess the performance of individuals and the project team as a whole. As project managers learn more about their team members’
goals, work styles, strengths, and weaknesses, they can adjust project plans to promote productivity and efficiency. There is a multitude of assessment tools (such as surveys, interviews, tests,
and focus groups) that can be used. The goal of these assessments is to enhance team performance by building trust, understanding, commitment, and communication skills.

Meetings
Meetings can be opportunities to discuss important project information with team members. The focus of meetings can vary from team kick-off meetings and orientations to team building and
development meetings.

The Tuckman Model

Projects take place in an increasingly global and culturally diverse sphere. Team members come from different places and bring different competencies and levels of expertise. It is the project manager’s
responsibility to manage and lead these individuals into forming a cohesive, high performing unit.

Team building includes conducting activities—formal and informal— that enhance the social relations between team members and improve team rapport, trust, and functionality. The purpose of such
activities is to bring teammates together and foster a collaborative and cooperative working space. Informal “getting-to-know-you” activities can be even more important with remote teams, as it is crucial
for team members to become acquainted and interdependent in order to complete project tasks. Teams should have meetings to set up ground rules and expectations. Team building and development is
a continuous process, and a project manager must be particularly sensitive to any environmental changes or other disruptions. The project manager should monitor team relations and performance and
make adjustments, when necessary.

Most teams go through a series of developmental stages known as the Tuckman Ladder, which is described below.

Click on each rung in the ladder below for more information.

Often, teams get “stuck” in one stage of the ladder and need assistance in order to progress in their development. It is the project manager’s responsibility to help the team get “unstuck” so they can
function properly and meet project goals as an efficient and cohesive unit.

5-7 Exercise: The Tuckman Model

This assignment does not contain any printable content.

5-8

Leading a High-Performing Team

An empowered or high-performing team will greatly increase the possibility of project success. Therefore, a key responsibility of the project manager is to develop this highly functioning team out of a
collection of people. A high-performing team possesses four common characteristics:

Click on each of the checkmarks below for more information.

Complementary skills

Forming

In the early stages of a team’s development, the forming of the group takes place.
From a work perspective, the group meets, learns about the project, agrees on
goals, and then begins working on tasks. From a behavioral perspective, the team
members tend to act independently and are on their best behavior. This stage is
important because the group gets to know one another and grows more friendly.

Because team members are just getting adjusted to new project tasks and new
coworkers, the team leader needs to be directive during the Forming stage.

Storming

After leaving the Forming stage, teams enter the Storming stage. In this stage,
different ideas and/or approaches compete for consideration by the group. The
team members feel more open with one another and confront different ideas and
perspectives. During Storming, team members deal with questions that include how
the team will function independently and collectively, as well as what leadership
model will be adopted. The length of the Storming stage varies by team. The
maturity of the group members typically determines when the team moves out of
this stage.

During the Storming stage, the team leader should focus on two areas:

Emphasizing tolerance of team members and their differences
Continuing to be directive in guiding decision-making

Norming

After the Storming stage concludes, teams enter the Norming stage. After
weathering the conflict of Storming, team members modify their behavior as they
develop team-oriented work habits. This results in more natural teamwork. The
group begins to build internal trust, and motivation increases as the team becomes
more comfortable with the project.

The team leader plays a more participative role than in the earlier stages. With the
group members working more cooperatively and effectively, they can be expected
to take more responsibility for decision-making.

Performing

High-performing teams reach what is called the Performing stage, when a team
finds ways to accomplish its work effectively without inappropriate conflict or the
need for external supervision. Team members become interdependent. Conflict is
handled through means that are acceptable to the team.

The team leader plays a participative role during the Performing stage, since the
team makes most of the necessary decisions.

Adjourning

As the project comes to a close, teams enter an Adjourning stage that offers a
sense of closure for the current project and acts as a stepping-off point for future
projects. This completion stage gives team members a chance to recognize their
achievements and say goodbye to each other before they move on to new roles
and activities. This can be a difficult time for some team members because the
relationships that have developed during the project are coming to an end, and
practitioners may be beginning new assignments that are not well-defined.

In the Adjourning stage, team leaders may need to rely on their “soft skills” to
alleviate concerns and enable team members to appropriately shift their focus to
their new activities. Leaders may be called upon to provide guidance to group
members and to assist in these transitions, to reduce uncertainty and ensure a
smooth progression to subsequent work.

The pursuit of a common goal

A shared approach and performance measurements

Mutual accountability

Empowered or high-performing teams communicate freely, exchange input and feedback, and discuss ideas openly. These team members work effectively together, are more enthusiastic and
committed, and resolve conflicts more quickly without intervention. And working on these types of teams encourages people to internalize the teams’ goals and be more highly motivated, more excited,
more creative, and harder working.

Team Leader Considerations

Company culture is reflected in company policies and procedures, work ethic, work hours, and team members’ shared values and norms, all of which impact team dynamics. A team leader with a highly
participative style will likely run into problems in an organization that is very hierarchical, while a team leader with a very authoritarian style will find it difficult to operate in a participative organization.
Leadership styles may also need to be adjusted based on the current stage of the project, but project leaders should consistently cultivate an atmosphere of teamwork.

Click on each of the leadership attributes below for more information.

Company Culture Trumps Personal Leadership Styles:
Company culture is a very strong and pervasive force. Even if a project
manager’s leadership style has been successful at one company, it may not be
successful at another. A project management team leader must consider whether
their personal leadership style complements the overall company culture. When
the two are in conflict, they must consider how they can modify their personal
styles to be more compatible with the overall company culture.

Organizational Structure May Limit Leadership Authority:
Just as company culture can be a barrier to project management team leadership
success, so can the organizational structure. Project managers working in a
functional organization, for example, must expect to have limited authority over
the team. In this environment, authority resides with the functional manager.
Although leadership cannot be exerted through authority in this type of
organization, there may be other sources of power that a project manager can
seek to use, such as expertise or respect.

Leaders Should Recognize Team Development Stages:
Normal team development stages can have an effect on project output. The
Forming stage is less productive as the team begins to understand the
requirements of the project. Then, time and resources are often consumed as the
team works through conflicts in the Storming stage. Once in the Norming phase,
project work picks up. Project managers must recognize this pattern and modify
their project plans and schedules accordingly.

Different Leadership Styles Are Needed for Different Team Development
Stages:
Successful project team leaders are flexible in many aspects including leadership
styles. In the Forming and Storming stages, it is crucial that the team leader
behave in a directive way. As the team evolves into the Norming, Performing, and
Adjourning phases, the project management leader’s style should become more
participative and engaging.

All teams, including Agile and adaptive ones, can benefit from using an empirical process. This sets the boundaries for a project but allows new work processes to develop, which means that teams can
work openly and collaboratively within project boundaries. Team members should experiment with new methods of achieving results, with limited stakeholder interference. This is most effective when
team members are co-located and when lessons learned are regularly shared, so that teams can learn and adapt as they explore new approaches to problem solving.

Challenges

There are, however, challenges to working with such teams. Although a team leader does not play a traditional supervisory role when working with an empowered team, they do have a critical role to play
in laying the groundwork for the team’s success. Indeed, a team leader can help workers collaborate successfully as an empowered team in three primary ways.

Teams Must Be Cultivated:
Teams don’t develop simply because several people are designated to work
together. Project management team leaders need to proactively create a shared
understanding and vision of what the team needs to accomplish. Team-building
activities will often help cultivate the atmosphere necessary to transform a work
group into a team.

Workers who are not used to being on an empowered team may initially be uncomfortable with the increased accountability that comes from working on such a team, and they may be uneasy depending
on their colleagues to such a great degree. A team leader should recognize this challenge and help employees deal with the stress of it. Moreover, workers may be unaccustomed to giving constructive
criticism to their peers. A leader can use team-building and training exercises to address the issue.

Communication is essential to the success of an empowered team. While team members may have little difficulty expressing their own opinions, they often fail to listen carefully to the opinions and ideas
of other team members. A team leader can use training exercises to instill the skill of careful listening.

Signs of Dysfunction

Project managers must also become comfortable identifying signs that their team is breaking down. Oftentimes, chronic complaining about progress or workload to one another or the project manager,
apathy, poor communication, and missed deadlines are red flags. When a project manager intervenes in such a situation, it is often helpful to call a meeting where team members can air their concerns,
and the project management team can gather information to decide on a course of action, which might be additional training that will allow staff to complete work with less frustration, or the project
management team might decide to use other team development techniques. Whatever intervention technique is chosen, it should be implemented quickly to address the problem before it adversely
affects the project.

5-9

Leading a Virtual Team

In today’s global business environment, companies need to move quickly and operate in the most cost-effective ways possible. As a result, virtual teams have become commonplace for large and small
organizations alike.

Virtual teams are groups working across time, geography, and organizational boundaries by employing the Web and other communications technology. When organizations elect to create virtual teams,
they focus on the potential advantages, such as the diversity of the team, or the potential for “round the clock” productivity with employees working in multiple time zones. In large companies, work
groups are often comprised of employees in distant countries. Small companies, operating on lean budgets, may decide to outsource different functions overseas for economic reasons. Virtual teams
allow both of these work groups to interact and collaborate with skilled colleagues in far-away locations that would not otherwise be possible.

Video: Virtual Teams

Virtual Teams

A virtual team is a group of people with a shared goal who fulfill project obligations with little or no time spent meeting face-to-face. Virtual teams may prevent projects from being postponed or
canceled due to travel expenses. They may also be more diverse, as they allow companies to pull talent from a wider range of geographic areas. Furthermore, virtual teams lend themselves to more
flexibility. Team members may choose to work from home offices or other non-traditional settings and can therefore work more flexible hours.

While virtual teams can be formed when existing team members move to new locations but retain the same job, they can also come about if a company lacks employees with the requisite project
skills, and the project manager must acquire staff from outside sources. This may involve hiring consultants or subcontracting work to another organization.

Regardless of how or why they are formed, virtual teams can have a positive impact on a company as long as they are managed well.

As the project manager assembles the team, they should consider whether candidates can work effectively in a virtual environment. If possible, the project manager should have a face-to-face or phone
meeting with virtual team members at the start of the project or when new virtual team members join the project. Clearly defining how communication will be conducted on a virtual project is extremely
important.

Developing Processes

Developing processes around project and task management, problem solving, decision making, and conflict management can be useful as well. With colocated teams, many small uncertainties can be
resolved through impromptu discussion. However, if questions arise with a virtual work group, and there are no clear processes in place, team members may simply move forward based on their
assumptions, without seeking clarification.

Cultural and linguistic differences can also make it challenging for virtual teams to develop a shared social context. Managers must make a concerted effort to understand the cultural norms of the team
and manage across them. Project managers will need certain skills to cultivate a virtual team:

Click on each of the headings below for more information.

They need to articulate team goals and individual roles.
While this may seem like Management 101, many managers underestimate the importance of goals and roles for virtual teams. Setting clear objectives helps a work group maintain team identity
and a productive connection to other members. Clearly defining roles helps individuals to understand what work they need to accomplish within the overall goals and processes of the project.

They need to coach remote employees.
Effective managers coach and mentor their staff. With virtual teams, however, this can be more difficult. Managers must make a concerted effort to reach out to remote employees and identify
ways to promote individual development.

They need to create the technological infrastructure needed to facilitate communication.
Virtual team leaders must be proficient with the different technologies that support communication between group members. Upper-level management must understand and support such an
infrastructure.

References

McHenry, Karen. (2008). Managing virtual teams. At Work Newswire

5-10

Managing Stakeholder Expectations

The satisfaction of project team members and associated stakeholders will rely on the interpersonal skills of the project manager, who may need to use decision-making, negotiation, and/or conflict
management skills to ensure project success. These skills may help soothe stakeholders and assure them that the project remains on track to meet the contracted project criteria. While not every issue
that arises needs to be addressed, those that do will need to be carefully considered to prevent project delays or incomplete requirements that may upset or anger stakeholders.

Running a successful project requires the careful management of stakeholders and their expectations. When project management teams properly manage stakeholder expectations by anticipating and
resolving problems, a project is more likely to be accepted by these stakeholders at its conclusion.

Tradeoffs

Successful stakeholder management involves updating all project participants on project progress and explaining the risks and tradeoffs needed to overcome problems and to meet project objectives.

Project status reports are an essential part of tradeoff discussions with stakeholders. Project managers must strike a balance between not including enough information in the status report and providing
too much information. When stakeholders have insufficient information, projects can become susceptible to risks, as decisions are made without adequate support or understanding. Conversely, when
people are deluged with extraneous information in a status report, project risk can also be increased as the extra data deflects focus from more important information or clouds issues.

In a perfect world, a project plan would never have to be altered, and project execution would be an academic exercise. In the real world, however, events (or the prospect of events) often force project
managers to develop creative alternatives to resolve issues or problems. In some instances, these creative responses result in secondary risks that need to be addressed, or they require tradeoffs in
project parameters (of scope, schedule, cost, quality, etc.) to keep the project on track. It is the project manager’s responsibility to ensure that these risks and tradeoffs are brought to stakeholders’
attention, to ensure that appropriate decisions are made and surprises avoided.

Discussing Tradeoffs with Stakeholders

To ensure transparency and to avoid surprises if changes are made, project managers should follow several basic guidelines when discussing the impact of tradeoffs with stakeholders.

Click on each of the numbered boxes below for more information.

Make sure that any requested changes are based on evidence. Provide diagnostic metrics (charts, trends, etc.) and analysis that demonstrates the need for tradeoffs.

Establish credibility and build trust by being transparent about the impact of tradeoffs on project constraints.

Listen carefully to the worries and concerns of stakeholders and propose adjustments, where appropriate, to address outstanding issues.

Offer as many alternatives as practicable. (Stakeholders feel more in control when they have multiple options to choose from.)

http://www.atworknewswire.com

Communicate continuously about risks (risk triggers, potential impacts on costs and duration, etc.) that could occur throughout the project life cycle, so stakeholders are not surprised if requests for
changes become necessary at a later date.

If tradeoffs need to be made to address project problems, there are several options that teams can consider to address problems or to correct project trends. Several of these options are included in the
following table.

Tradeoff Options

Scope
Reduce the scope of the project?
Reduce the project’s complexity?
Deliver the product/service/output in stages?

Time

Reduce the duration of specific project phases?
Modify the critical path?
Employ crashing techniques?
Extend the project deadline?

Cost

Spend the contingency reserve?
Spend the management reserve?
Add to the reserves?
Negotiate lower prices with suppliers/vendors?
Exceed the project budget (with approval)?
Approach management to add to the project budget?
Capitalize project expenses?

Resources

Add staff?
Borrow staff or resources from within the organization?
Add needed skills/capabilities through training?
Outsource technical resources?
Rely more on contractors?
Rely more on end-users?

Quality

Compress the quality assurance (QA) process?
Reduce the level of the QA process for noncritical project
components?
Modify the quality standards?

If any of these options is chosen, project managers will then have to work with their teams to determine how the changes associated with these options will affect other portions of the project, and any
adjustments that need to be made should be explained to all of the affected parties.

5-11

Resolving Issues

Properly managing stakeholders means dealing with issues as they arise. By working together with stakeholders toward a common solution, project managers can increase the likelihood for project
success.

When a stakeholder issue involves risk, the project management team can respond to the issue with a range of responses. By consulting the risk management plan, the risk register, and possible
solutions, the project management team can decide how the issue needs to be resolved in order to satisfy stakeholder expectations. The response should take into account stakeholder management
strategies, but generally, the issue should be addressed with stakeholders promptly and sincerely.

Video Commentary:

The Issue Log

As changes are discussed with stakeholders, these conversations may uncover new issues that need to be investigated and addressed. As with all other issues on the project, these issues should be
documented in an issue log.

The Issue Log

Richard Maltzman

What is an issue log? First of all, what is an issue? An issue is a 100-percent certain problem that is having a negative effect on your project’s objective, and it’s important to dissect that definition of an
issue first. For example, a supplier providing needed materials for your project has gone bankrupt. That’s an issue.

An issue log is the place to capture all of the relevant info about the issue: the owner, the subject matter experts involved, the current status, the resolution plans you have in place, and the impacts on
the project and the project’s objectives.

This needs to be a living document, updated frequently and communicated widely to the right people. Otherwise, issues fester.

Rich Maltzman, PMP®, is a speaker, consultant, senior lecturer, and professional advancement leader with extensive project management and business development experience.
Rich has authored and co-authored several highly regarded books and articles and continues to develop curricula and programs for national and local colleges.

The issue log helps the project manager and project management team decide how they will focus their efforts and keep the project on track. Any time an issue is discovered, the project manager (or
appropriate team member) will need to update the issue log with all pertinent information, which will then allow the project management team to prioritize and plan for the issue’s resolution. Each issue
should be assigned an owner who is responsible for communicating about the issue with the appropriate parties, and for tracking and resolving the issue by a set target date. Documenting (and
continually updating) all issues will ensure that a shared understanding of each issue exists and that plans for how it will be addressed and resolved have been thought through.

Resolving Issues

When an issue is uncovered, the project team can respond with a range of responses that will depend on the issue itself and on the abilities of the people on the team.

If the project’s budget includes management reserves set aside for potential issues, the project management team may need approval to apply these reserves to resolve the issue. Changes to the project
activities may also need to be made, and while a change should not be implemented without considering the impacts on the project’s baselines and the work of the project team, project managers should
not be resistant to change out of principle or stubbornness. It is all too common for project managers to become so invested in their ideas about how projects should be run that they are resistant to
changes necessary to bring the project to success.

If planned project activities do need to be changed to ensure that the project meets acceptance criteria, change requests may need to be submitted and project documents may need to be updated.
Regardless of the specific management decisions made, the issue log will need to be updated to reflect the issue’s resolution. This updated issue log will become an important document for future
projects, as the lessons learned from resolving the issues can help other teams avoid similar problems or use the relevant information to resolve their own problems.

5-12

Metrics and Trend Analysis

Metrics enable teams to assess what is happening with a project. One of their most important benefits is making performance and progress more visible. The following metrics are commonly used to
assess projects: predictive metrics, diagnostic metrics, and retrospective metrics.

Click on each of the boxes below for more information.

Performance Reporting

An analysis of metrics may help to uncover trends that are occurring as a project is executed. These metrics are often contained in the project status reports that are generated and updated during project
work. ( Note: Status reports will be described briefly here but will be discussed in greater detail in a subsequent assignment of this module.)

Project status reports should present project metric information (as well as other project information) at a level of detail that makes sense for their intended audience. Often, this means that these
documents should include detailed or in-depth material for well-informed participants and team members.

Examples of this type of more-extensive material may include:

Results of Earned Value Management Analysis

For those stakeholders with advanced knowledge of earned value management, status reports may include details such as cost variance/cost performance index numbers, schedule
variance/schedule performance index data, critical ratios, and project forecasting data. This will help those knowledgeable stakeholders better understand the project and its progress.

Status of Project Risks

Status reports may include details about project risk, including changes in the levels of risk on the project, trends that may suggest upcoming risks, a discussion of new risks that have been
uncovered, the results of any implemented risk responses that have been put into effect, and risks that have “passed” and are unlikely to occur. The project’s risk register (and any supporting
documentation) should be updated to reflect any new information that is discussed or included in status report meetings.

Overview of Project Changes

Practitioners may want to spell out any specific project changes that have occurred since the last status report was presented. These may include changes to deliverables, changes to team
makeup, and/or any other changes that are deemed important. This may also include any changes authorized and/or rejected by the change control board.

Work Completed This Period

Status reports may also include a discussion of work completed since the last status presentation. This discussion may be detailed or kept at a high level, depending on the audience and their
level of interest and understanding.

In a status report, the project manager will typically discuss schedule metrics, resource metrics, and scope metrics. The following table outlines diagnostic measures for each of these three categories:

Diagnostic Measures for Metrics

Schedule
metrics

Key milestones missed
Critical path activity slippage
Number of added activities
Early activity completions
Activity closure index: the ratio of activities closed in the project so far to the number expected

Schedule variances should be noted in status reports, along with the root causes. If the root cause points to new risks, the project manager should schedule a meeting for additional risk analysis and
response planning.

Resource
metrics

Excess consumption of effort or funds
Amount of unplanned overtime
Earned value (EV): a running accumulation of the costs that were planned for every project activity that is currently complete
Actual cost (AC): a running accumulation of the actual costs for every project activity that is currently complete

Resource variances are also significant. If project progress is too slow due to insufficient resources, the project manager should notify upper-level management immediately. If, on the other hand, resources
are being used faster than expected, the project manager faces a serious problem. It is difficult to reverse resource overconsumption, so a project may hit a limit on staff or money before it is completed.

Scope
metrics

Results of tests and inspection reviews
Number and magnitude of approved scope changes

If scope metrics suggest that the project can be finished with added hours or time, there will likely be an impact on the project schedule, resources, or both. The project manager must analyze the options
and propose any necessary changes. If a scope problem cannot be resolved with extra work, the only options available are to downsize the final product or abandon the project. Scope problems can also
affect other projects. The project manager must notify other teams about status, so they can devise new strategies if necessary.

5-13 Exercise: Project Metrics

This assignment does not contain any printable content.

5-14

Agile Metrics

Predictive metrics can identify risks early
on in the project life cycle. They use forecast
information to uncover risks, such as
unrealistic assumptions and other problems.
Examples of predictive metrics include
project complexity, the number of planned
activities, project duration, staff size, total
cost, and number of geographically separate
sites.

Project managers may use predictive metrics
in a variety of ways. For example, they can
be used to determine the project scale, to
identify situations that will require
contingency planning, or to justify schedule
and budget reserves. When a predictive
metric is significantly larger than past, similar
projects, it should be a red flag for a project
manager. A variance of 15% to 20% is
usually a sign of significant project risk. An
important note to remember: predictive
metrics are the least precise metrics
because they rely on speculative data.

Diagnostic metrics are calculated based
on measurements that are taken over the
course of the project. They are useful for
identifying project variances and problems,
either in advance or as soon as possible.
Baselines are established by using a
combination of project goals and historical
data from previous projects.

Diagnostic metrics can be used to trigger risk
responses, evaluate the impact of project
changes, signal early warning signs of
problems, or inform decisions to modify or
cancel a project.

Retrospective metrics evaluate how well a
process worked after project completion.
These measures are valuable for tracking
trends, validating the methods that were
used to develop predictive metrics,
identifying recurrent sources of risk, or
signaling when to improve or replace current
project processes. Examples of retrospective
metrics include the number of accepted
changes, the actual project duration
compared to the planned schedule, the
actual budget compared to the planned
budget, and late project defect correction
effort as a percentage of total effort.

Agile Metrics

Project teams that utilize more adaptive management techniques typically collect a small set of simple metrics that they use to drive decisions and encourage behavior. The metrics that team members
collect should help them refine their actions and accomplish their objectives. The information they capture must provide them with the precise data they need to track progress, increase quality, and
improve activities.

The Project Manager’s Toolbox
Click on each of the headings below for more information.

Velocity/Throughput/Productivity

Velocity is a metric that measures a team’s pace of work. It is sometimes referred to as throughput or productivity. Early on, the team may have to take an educated guess at how long it will take
to complete a user story, but, after a few iterations, the team should get a sense of how quickly it can realistically and sustainably produce work on a project.

It is imperative for teams to keep track of how long it takes to complete certain types of work so that they can normalize user stories by consistently applying points to stories across a project
based on size and complexity of the work required. Once the team is aware of their typical completion speed, they can determine their velocity and estimate the amount of time it will take to
complete the projects and its activities.

A team’s velocity can change over time and when faced with different types of work, so the team should take measurements and adjust appropriately after an iteration. Velocity is demonstrable
and measurable through the satisfaction of story points, so it should not be assumed to be the same from iteration to iteration or across projects and teams.

Cycle Time/Lead Time

Cycle time is the amount of time that an issue or story is actually being worked on; it starts when a person takes responsibility for a piece of work and ends when the work is completed or
transitioned to others.

Lead time incorporates all of the cycle time plus any time that the story is waiting to be worked on; it includes the hours of actual effort and all of the delays and waiting that take place between
those pieces of work.

Cycle time can be thought of as a subset of lead time For example, the lead time for a particular user story could be characterized from the time that the story is placed in the product backlog
until the story is delivered to the customer; the cycle time would be only that portion of time from when the story was selected from the backlog to the point where the story is done or ready for
delivery to the customer. So a team member may be responsible for a piece of work that has a cycle time of 20 hours (because it will take 20 hours of actual effort to finish) but has a lead time of
two weeks to complete (because the team member will not start the work right away or may be interrupted by other tasks or delays).

It should be noted that if an issue or story is reopened after a period of time, any additional work done is added to the cycle time, because someone will once again be working to complete the
activity.

Work in Progress

When team members encounter delays in their work, they may be tempted to multitask or to begin work on new user stories before they have completed their current work. The unfinished work
that they leave behind is commonly known as work in progress.

Work in progress (WIP) is any work in an iteration that has been started but not finished. This may occur because team members have taken on too many responsibilities, because they have not
followed through to completely finish their work, or because the team is understaffed and team members feel like they have to tackle multiple tasks simultaneously to finish the iteration on time.

Any increase in work in progress will cause a decrease in throughput—practitioners will be hard at work, but activities will never be completed because the team is overscheduled. Common
responses to resolve work-in-progress problems include reducing the number of projects or tasks team members are working on, ensuring that staff is dedicated to the work they have chosen,
and placing WIP limits on iterations and releases.

WIP Limits

Project teams can easily get overwhelmed by trying to fit large amounts of work into short periods of time. Even the best of intentions can lead to bottlenecks in the workflow. To avoid situations
like this, project teams can set work-in-progress (WIP) limits. This means that the team will limit the number of user stories that are worked on during certain time period or in a certain phase of
the project life cycle. Teams only take on more work once they have completed the stories that were included in the WIP limit.

Earned Value Management

Earned value management (EVM) is a sophisticated technique that provides insight into how a project is trending against its schedule and budget at a specific point in time. It compares the actual
work completed against the work planned to be completed, and to the actual cost to achieve that work.

On many traditional projects, the time and cost to develop EVM metrics is not worth the value received. However, Agile projects have an advantage that simplifies EVM calculations. Because
Agile teams strive to quickly reach a constant velocity, the actual progress against the schedule and budget can be represented as a straight line from the project start (where actual cost and
duration are 0% of estimates) to the project conclusion (where actual cost and duration are 100% of estimates). For example, if the project takes 20 iterations to complete, one would expect that
at the end of each iteration the team will have completed 5% of the work, for 5% of the budget and in 5% of the total estimated duration.

The team can determine the project’s status against the schedule by comparing the actual percentage of story points completed in an iteration against the estimated percentage of story points
that should have been completed at the end of the iteration. This will show if the team is ahead of, behind, or on schedule. For example, if the team plans to complete 5% of the work during
each iteration, they would expect to complete 30% of the story points at the end of iteration six (5% of the work X six iterations = 30%). If they actually complete 34% of the story points by the
end of the iteration, they would be trending ahead of schedule.

Likewise, the team can compare the actual cost of completing all the user stories to date against the budgeted cost for completing this same number of user points. In a similar fashion, this will
show if the team is trending over, under, or on budget.

Defect Rate

Teams may decide to measure the quality of their work by capturing the number of defects implemented at the end of an iteration. Of course, a team does not implement defects on purpose;
every team strives to create a defect-free solution. However, in spite of a team’s best efforts, some defects may make it out of an iteration as escaped defects.

(Defects are typically viewed as errors, but the term can be more broadly interpreted as any aspect of a user story that is not implemented correctly.)

When a defect is reported, the team analyzes and validates the defect, then adds it to the product backlog. (The defect is not added to the current iteration unless the error is particularly
onerous.) The defect will then be selected from the backlog in a future iteration, and the error will be corrected.

Defects are counted so that a team better understands the level of quality it is producing. Teams could calculate a ratio of the number of defects per iteration, the number of defects per 100 story
points, or the number of defects per user story. This ratio will allow the team to compare defect rates over time to validate that quality is improving as project work progresses.

Approved Iterations

A final metric that organizations may use to measure and track performance is the number of iterations that have been approved as “done.” An iteration cannot be approved until all activities,
tasks, and user stories have been reviewed and formally accepted by the appropriate parties. As teams evolve, their ability to finish tasks will increase, and the number of approved iterations
should escalate. However, this metric should not be used to compare one team to another, as the parameters of each release may be so disparate as to make a comparison pointless and
ineffective.

Cumulative Flow Diagrams

Agile metrics are often communicated to project participants through the use of cumulative flow diagrams. Cumulative flow diagrams show the progress of work within each portion of a project life cycle,
illustrating how much work has been done, how much work is in progress, and how much is still left to do, for each phase of the cycle.

The top line in a cumulative flow diagram shows the overall work that will need to be completed to finish a project. Below this top line are several other lines that provide a historical view of the work in
each phase of the project.

Reviewing the cumulative flow diagram allows an Agile team to analyze the relationships among the project phase work to pinpoint inefficiencies and bottlenecks. By comparing the vertical space
between lines in the diagram, an Agile team can see how much work-in-progress the project has at any given point in time. By analyzing the horizontal space between lines in the diagram, the team can
determine how long work is in a specific phase of the project. When teams understand the trends within a project life cycle, they can adapt their work to correct any discrepancies or inconsistencies.

5-15

Status Reports

Project managers need to discern which information regarding project status to share and the best way to provide it. An easy way to provide project progress to stakeholders is with a simple status
report. The status report should be concise and easy-to-understand but should still cover all aspects of the project that are important to stakeholders. It should seek to answer the following questions:

Click on each of the question mark icons below for more information.

What deliverables are complete or incomplete?

Have any quality or technical issues that have occurred?

What changes have occurred, and how has the team dealt with them?

What risks are currently affecting the project, and which risks could affect future work?

Is the team meeting the project schedule?

What costs have been authorized and incurred?

How quickly are resources being used?

Tracking this relevant data and presenting it to stakeholders in a succinct format will provide a quick reference for further discussions should the need arise.

Completing the Status Report

The recommended format for a status report is to start with a brief summary that includes the current project risks. Additional details to follow the summary may include the following:

A brief discussion of each major accomplishment that has occurred since the last report
Tasks planned for the next status period
Significant risks, issues, and problems associated with planned responses
A schedule summary
A resource summary
Project analysis that describes key metrics and variances, as well as any plans for resolution of issues
Risk analysis, including known risks in the near future and the status of ongoing risk recovery efforts

An example of a project status report is presented below.

When a project manager presents this information to stakeholders, they should consider placing the information that is most critical to the audience at the top of the form; highlighting this information in
this way will increase its visibility and reinforce its importance.

Status reports can be complex, detailed documents or simple, targeted updates but, either way, they should summarize work performance to a level of detail that makes sense for each stakeholder. While
some stakeholders may need to know specific details about project work, others may just need to know that the project is on track or that additional resources were needed to complete activities as
planned. Whatever format is used to present information, it should compare expected performance to actual results and discuss the impact of any discrepancies. Tracking project performance against the
project baselines and other documents created in the Planning stage will help expose variations in problems as they arise. A project manager can then work with the project team and key stakeholders to
address these problems and realign project work with expectations.

5-16 Performance Reporting

Performance Reporting

The status of a project is monitored based on a four-step cycle. This cycle occurs on a regular interval (usually weekly) over the course of the entire project. The cycle steps are summarized below.

Click on each of the numbered boxes below for more information.

Collect project status information from team members.

Compare the current status against the project plan. Part of this process is evaluating key metrics and analyzing variances.

Respond to issues and problems that have arisen.

Communicate status to appropriate project stakeholders. Status reports and status meetings keep people informed about what is happening with the project.

Customizing the Information Provided

Communicating and distributing information can quickly become overwhelming if the project manager has to customize information for a wide array of stakeholders and interested parties. Not all
stakeholders will want—or need—to see all project information, so it is important to tailor the information to the parties involved. For example, project leaders may want to consider appointing department
managers as communication contacts so they can tailor information to focus on important facets for their particular team or department.

Managing

Communications

To make sure that stakeholder communication is properly managed, the project team may want to review the stakeholder list that they created in the Initiating stage to ensure that they didn’t forget
stakeholders and that they pay particular attention to those that need special care (especially high-power or high-interest stakeholders).

They should also consider whether the team will need to dedicate resources to external communication. Communication with other organizations or with the public can be costly and time-consuming and
is likely to require formats and methods that are different from the ones used for internal communications. Project leaders should be sure to consider any rules and regulations on releasing information to
external sources—their organization or other parties involved in the project may have specific policies about what information can be released and who is authorized to release this type of information.

As a project team runs its project, project managers will be expected to report on the team’s performance to interested stakeholders. To provide useful reports, team members will need to monitor their
performance closely and update the project manager with timely information; the project manager will then need to summarize any important information in a style and format that will meet the needs of
his or her audience.

Presenting Information in Status Meetings

When presenting status or performance reports, project managers should begin by focusing on good news that publicly acknowledges the team’s hard work. Visual tools and graphics should be used to
show progress and to display accomplishments. By providing an open acknowledgment of achievements, the project manager can recognize team success and enhance motivation by helping team
members feel connected to the project and its goals.

If an issue requires further investigation, project team leaders should be sure to track any necessary action items on a spreadsheet and assign them to team members for follow-through. Leaders should
allow assigned team members to discuss progress on the action items during team meetings and to request help in completing assignments if needed.

If there is any performance information that needs immediate attention, leaders and managers might want to consider using a form of push communication to present this information to stakeholders;
pushing information directly to stakeholders may increase the likelihood that information will be read quickly and acted on with more urgency.

5-17

Adaptive Meeting Techniques

For teams utilizing adaptive project management techniques, meeting frequently is important. Because project planning and execution are done iteratively in an adaptive/Agile environment, it is
imperative for team members to check in with each other regularly regarding progress. A common technique for this necessary type of communication is the daily stand-up (also known as the daily
scrum).

The Daily Scrum

A daily stand-up is a regularly scheduled meeting that team members hold as they execute their iteration (aka sprint) to help them plan their next 24 hours of work. These meetings are generally held at
the same time in the same location each workday, to create a sense of consistency about work processes and a feeling of commitment among the work team.

Traditionally, in a daily stand-up, each team member answers three questions:

What he or she has done since the last daily stand-up?
What he or she will do today?
What obstacles or impediments are preventing the completion of sprint tasks?

Note: More recently, Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland (the co-developers of Scrum) have suggested that maybe these three questions should be de-emphasized to prevent daily stand-ups from
becoming simple “status meetings,” without the benefit of focused discussion about sprint tasks and activities. Instead, they encourage Agile teams to use their daily stand-ups to foster a sense of
collaboration and to understand how they can work together to meet objectives better and become a high-performing self-organized group.

Averting Other Meetings

Daily stand-ups help to eliminate the need for other meetings; the communication and planning that occurs every day in these sessions should preempt the need for longer-but-less-frequent forums that
often produce outcomes that are obsolete before they can be implemented. Instead, daily stand-ups produce results that can be immediately put to use because they are necessary, relevant, and
applicable right now to enhance team actions and improve operations.

Who Runs the Daily Stand-up?

It is important to note that it is the team—not the project leaders or scrum master—who runs the meeting. A daily stand-up may attract people who are interested in the project (or its outcomes) but who
are not directly involved in completing project tasks; it is up to the scrum master to shield the team from interruptions or interference and prevent these “external” project participants from interjecting
themselves into the meeting discussions.

Preventing Distractions

The daily stand-up serves a very important function in an Agile cycle, but it can become a significant distraction if not done well. This meeting should help the team achieve its goals, and not become a
chore that it must perform to satisfy a management directive.

Here are a few ideas for project leaders to keep in mind to make their daily meetings live up to their potential:

Click on each of the headings below for more information.
Communications

Focus the daily stand-up on communicating, not reporting.

If the meeting becomes simply a forum to present individual progress reports, the team is wasting valuable time and should send an email instead. Email reports can provide an adequate record
of progress. If, however, the team uses the daily stand-up to let team members discuss daily progress and request additional assistance, it will encourage team interaction, provide transparency
for the project, and keep the project on track.

In a post on BrightHub.com, Ronda Levine noted that a daily stand-up should meet five goals: recommit the team members to the project as a team, communicate the project status, identify any
obstacles the team has encountered, set the day’s direction, and help the team build cohesiveness. Reporting meetings may be able to meet some of these goals, but, to satisfy all of the goals,
these meetings need to be collaborative and interactive.

Discussion

Don’t let daily stand-ups become in-depth problem-solving discussions.

Daily stand-ups should uncover any obstacles that team members are facing, but should not be a prolonged discussion of how to solve problems. Participants should use the meeting to discover
how (in general terms) a problem could be dealt with and who can help with an issue, but should leave the specifics for addressing the problem outside of the group meeting. (Discussing the
problem-solving specifics immediately after the daily stand-up, while the details of the problem are still fresh in everyone’s mind and solving the problem, will allow further progress). Remember
that the stand-up should be brief, to allow people to share information and then get back to creating products and satisfying customer requirements.

Logistics

Be consistent with meeting logistics.

It is important to select a location and time for daily stand-ups and stick to these decisions. Leaders should consider holding the meeting in a common area near the project story boards to allow
presenters to use the boards to clarify points. They should also consider holding the meeting at the start of the workday, when energy levels are high and the entire day is available to solve
problems and complete tasks. They need to be sure that they start and end the meetings on time; people will be more likely to attend if they know that the stand-up is timeboxed and they can get
back to work. (For distributed or dispersed teams, project managers should also consider time-zone differences when scheduling the meeting.) Leaders should think about arranging team
members so that presenters are grouped in the center of the area, with observers behind them, to ensure that the meeting is about team collaboration, not about input from outsiders.

Guidelines

Set guidelines for the stand-up.

Meeting leaders should make sure that team members record their progress on the burndown chart (or burn-up chart) before the meeting begins so that the most-current information is available
for discussion. Rules should be established that will determine who will speak first, then who will speak next, and so on. (For example, perhaps the person who arrives to the stand-up last must
begin the conversation, or the person who occupies a specific spot in the room must speak first, then select the next speaker.) It is imperative to make sure the communication is among the
team, not to the project manager or product owner. (If this proves difficult, meeting leaders may want to instruct the manager to look away or walk away from the presenter while he or she is
speaking, reinforcing that this is a collaborative team meeting, not a management progress report.) Ground rules need to be set that describe which issues members can raise in the meeting—
can members discuss only issues they need help with, or can they also share information about any problems they can overcome themselves? And meeting participants need to make sure that
any issues or impediments uncovered are fixed before the next day’s stand-up.

Following these practices will help the project team hold more productive meetings. Daily stand-ups should be something that team members attend because they see the value in these meetings, not
because it is a management or project requirement to do so.

5-18

Change Requests

A project manager will likely receive change requests as their team executes its project work, but it is important to realize that not all change requests are good for the project. They may not bring enough
value to the project to merit inclusion, or they may create significant disruption to existing work. The job of a project leader is to evaluate calls for change (either by themselves or as part of a change
control team) and implement those changes that will add benefit to project work.

At the heart of change control processes are the change requests submitted by the project’s practitioners and stakeholders. Requests can be submitted either verbally or in writing but should be formally
recorded so they can be appropriately processed through the change control system, and archived for future use and implementation.

The approval of a change request will likely depend on factors such as the cost of the change, the effect that the change may have on other parts of the project (like the project schedule or project risks),
or specific requirements listed in a contract. Once a conclusion about a change request has been made (to accept, defer, or reject it), this decision will need to be communicated to the appropriate
parties, and any resulting actions will need to be managed and monitored.

The Change Request Form

An effective way to track and monitor changes and change requests is to develop a change request form. This form will allow project participants to document requests for project changes and to monitor
the results of those requests. It will serve as a record that can be referred to in retrospect to help teams develop lessons learned and to understand why a project’s final result may differ from initial plans.

Click on each section in the graphic below for more information.

Record the project title and date of the request. This will be help in archiving and referencing the document in lessons
learned meetings.

Describe the requested change in detail. Include information as to why the change is needed as well as any information
on which portions of the project (scope, budget, schedule, quality, etc.) the change may affect. Consider adding an unique
identification code or number that can be used to reference the change in discussions quickly.

Record the name of the person (or persons) requesting the change. Consider including contact information for this person
and his/her role on the project.

Review Checkpoint

To test your understanding of the content presented in this assignment, please click on the Questions icon below. Click your selected response to see feedback displayed below it. If you have trouble
answering, you are always free to return to this or any assignment to re-read the material.

1. Which of the following may affect acceptance of a change request?

a. the effect that the change will have on other parts of the project

Incorrect. Try again.

b. contractual requirements

Incorrect. Try again.

c. the cost of the change

Incorrect. Try again.

d. all of the above

Correct. Approval of a change request may hinge upon the cost of the change, the effect the change will have on other project parameters, and/or specific requirements in a contract.

2. Hans wants to know why his change request was denied. What part of the change request form would hold this information?

a. the Impact section

Incorrect. Try again.

b. the Status section

Correct. If a request is denied, the reasoning behind the decision should be documented in the Status section of the change request form.

c. the Requesting Party section

Incorrect. Try again.

d. the Change Request section

Incorrect. Try again.

5-19

Exercise: Project Execution

Module Feedback

[feedback|module]

Explain any potential impacts that the change may have on the project. Consider the effect on the project’s scope,
schedule, budget, quality, risk, processes, and product characteristics.

Classify the change request as “open/in process,” “approved,” “rejected,” or “escalated” (to a higher level). If the request
is rejected or escalated, state the reasoning behind the decision.

Have the request signed by the person responsible for accepting or rejecting the request.

5-1 Module Five Pre-test

Module Five Pre-test

5-2 Executing the Project Work

Executing the Project Work
The Project Manager as a Communicator
The Project Manager as a Leader

5-3 The Project Journal

The Project Journal
Capturing Data in Real Time
The Journal Content and Format

5-4 What is a Team?

What is a Team?
Slide 1
Slide 2
Slide 3
Slide 4
What is a team slideshow
Developing a Team, Not a Group

5-5 Forming the Project Team

Forming the Project Team
Project Team Assignments
Staffing the Project
Negotiating for Services

5-6 Developing a Project Team

Developing a Project Team
The Project Manager’s Toolbox
The Tuckman Model
Adjourning

5-7 Exercise: The Tuckman Model
This assignment does not contain any printable content.

5-8 Leading a High-Performing Team

Leading a High-Performing Team
Team Leader Considerations
Challenges
Signs of Dysfunction

5-9 Leading a Virtual Team

Leading a Virtual Team
Video: Virtual Teams
Developing Processes
References

5-10 Managing Stakeholder Expectations

Managing Stakeholder Expectations
Tradeoffs
Discussing Tradeoffs with Stakeholders

5-11 Resolving Issues

Resolving Issues
Video Commentary: The Issue Log
Resolving Issues

5-12 Metrics and Trend Analysis

Metrics and Trend Analysis
Performance Reporting

5-13 Exercise: Project Metrics
This assignment does not contain any printable content.

5-14 Agile Metrics

Agile Metrics
The Project Manager’s Toolbox
WIP Limits
Cumulative Flow Diagrams

5-15 Status Reports

Status Reports
Completing the Status Report
Sample Project Status Report
Project status report:

5-16 Performance Reporting
Performance Reporting
Overall Status:
Accomplishments this Period:
Customizing the Information Provided
Scheduled Items Not Completed:
Managing Communications
Activities Next Period:
Presenting Information in Status Meetings
Issues:

5-17 Adaptive Meeting Techniques

Adaptive Meeting Techniques
The Daily Scrum
Changes
Averting Other Meetings
Corrective Actions:
Who Runs the Daily Stand-up?
Preventing Distractions

5-18 Change Requests

Change Requests
The Change Request Form
Review Checkpoint

5-19 Exercise: Project Execution

Exercise: Project Execution
Module Feedback
Module Feedback

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