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Now that you have a detailed project plan and have absorbed the step-by-step tutorial, you are ready to start the activities and track them.
If you have tasks that span less than a day, you should take stock of the situation at the end of the day. But, don’t be a bossy person and jump at conclusions if the “targets” were not met.
After all, estimates are estimates only.
However, do get concerned if after a week, things are falling behind significantly. After all, these delays will only keep adding up because more often than not, estimates tend towards the lower side than towards the upper.
You must start thinking of corrective actions although you need not be alarmed at this stage. Sometimes, teams take a little getting used to before marching on full speed. And if they do pick up speed, that still doesn’t mean you should let your guard down.
Weekly tracking and updating the project plan you must.
Yes, update the project plan regularly.
Mark a task as complete when it gets completed. Make sure you keep track of the Start and Finish dates as well and not just whether the task was 10% complete, 50% complete or 100% complete.
Create charts as shown in the example in lesson 7 of the step-by-step tutorial. Share them with the client regularly (weekly is good), so that she is aware of the progress and the issues.
Communication lapses do cause a lot of heartburn and do cause projects to fail. Reporting is as important as planning and tracking.
Share the progress with the internal team(s) as well. Applaud the good. Take concrete steps to fix the bad, and to prevent such recurrences. Motivate the team to do better.
“uh… oh! Did we mention that the project plan must include enough time for testing and bug-fixing?”
Mark the word “enough” in the above statement. An area that gets grossly underestimated is the effort required to do a thorough QA. Keep in mind that a few cycles of QA become necessary as bugs get identified and fixed. Good or bad, reality is that bugs are going to be there. So, plan for it in the project plan.
Roughly speaking, and depending on project type and size, the various phases can range (as a percentage of the overall effort; note that it is effort and not duration) as follows:
- Requirements gathering and analysis, and Project planning, tracking and reporting: 25% - 35%
- Design and Development: 35% - 50%
- Testing and Deployment: 25% - 35%
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