Coloured sticky notes, replacement to Gantt Charts

As we discussed about velocity charts in my last post, which helps you for project progress tracking. Tracking will come into the picture, if you plan and schedule your project well. Well scheduled project can be well tracked! Yes so let’s talk about planning phase in this document.

As many of us knows that, Gantt chart is famous tool for project scheduling. Wiki definition says “It’s a bar chart developed by Mr. Henry Grantt in 1910, which illustrates project schedule (Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart). Gantt chart gives you a pictorial view of complete project schedule. Each bar represents a time for particular task and hence help to track them.

We, tried to achieve this simply using quickly available colored sticky notes. Following is the simplest recipe which helps us to track schedule of the projects based on deliveries/Milestones.

Ingredients:

1. White board. If not, any plane paper sheet. 
2. Sticky notes. Better if colored
3.  White board markers

Process

1. Firstly, decide project milestones or deliverable
2. Draw vertical lines equal to count of deliverable/milestones
3. Give short names to each vertical line (e.g. M1, M2… etc.)
4. You can add delivery dates at the bottom of each vertical line (This process is optional, but helps to track the deliveries)
5. Now write each task on sticky notes
6. Now Paste them according to proper milestones. (Between 2 appropriate vertical lines). Pictures below will explain it better.
7. You can even go further and add time to each sticky note i.e. time for each task

Above image will give you a quick illustration of sticky notes based schedule. If you don’t want to use more sticky notes you can use following simple way to track/plan your project.

Above image will show how we managed a time bound project using same technique.

Now,

1.  You can draw arrows between dependent tasks to display proper flow of tasks
2.  Once task is done, you can either put tick mark against it or you can remove sticky note
3.  Involve team in this exercise. Advantage is whole team can get a complete view and sequence of the tasks so if any one has any query, just look at the white board

This colorful schedule tool may help in motivation of your team as it does in mine!

Happy Management!

Software Project Development: How velocity chart helps to track project progress

What is “velocity”? As we all know, it’s the speed of something in given direction. Right? If you are driving a car, we says that it’s running e.g. 60 Km/h towards north. What it means? That means your car has specific speed and specific direction, yes it has velocity.

Similar fundamentals applies to software projects too. Each project must have some speed and some direction which exactly means that each project must run with some velocity. While saying this, velocity means project team must work towards requirements within pre-decided schedule.

Project completion is the function of accuracy of original estimation and progress you have made! Measuring only schedule progress is not enough. If you are running feature based project, best method to calculate progress is how many features are there in the project, how many features your team has implemented, quality of the implemented features, and how many features pending.

But how to measure progress? Big question. For features based project, Velocity Chart is the best indicator. Velocity chart gives you an idea about how much progress is made till now and how much work has left.

If you observe above figure, which is a velocity chart, it is very simple to understand. Following is the process to create velocity chart:

1. X- axis is number of features
2. Y-axis is date (Can be milestone dates/ delivery dates etc.)
3. Now you can add up number of features against expected date as your total features of project
4. As and when team completes a feature, you can increase 1 number in graph against completed. In a similar way you can remove one from pending.(This can be optional)
5. If you want to add more features during the project, you can do the same
6. Ultimate aim is completed features = total number of features or pending features = 0

Velocity charts, measures three things requirements, completed work and duration. It is based on agile methodology, as people can track team’s progress for sprints. In a way, Velocity Chart is your friend! Use it!