Better Software - November 2008 - (Page 37) or variance from current plans. This requires up-front planning from the project manager to describe the work approach and ongoing effort to track progress against those plans. It also requires effort on the part of the people receiving status to take the time to understand the meaning and implications of status. Let’s examine a hypothetical project beginning with resources and working through to scope. Resources Pictures can show how the budget (resource) plan and progress against it are related, as shown in table 2. Imagine a four-month project expected to consume $200,000. We arrived at this figure from estimates of labor as well as hardware and software purchasing allocated across the life of the project. When the project is approved, these estimates become the “baseline” plan, the basis for future comparisons of progress and performance. Let’s create a status report for this project in late September. Actual expense information (hours spent and hardware and software purchased) is known for the month of August and for the first half of September. First, let’s focus on what we know about September. We had originally budgeted $45,000 for September, as shown in figure 1. As of September 15, we had spent only $20,000; however, we anticipate spending an additional $40,000 this month. Yikes! This information says we expect to be $15,000 (33 percent) over budget in September. That is the danger of looking at a point in time out of context. Figure 1 shows what we believe is happening in September, but it doesn’t explain why or provide much context for the information. What might be helpful would be to show September in the context of the entire project budget, as shown in figure 2. We now see that in September we expect to spend $15,000 more than initially planned, but October is now expected to cost $12,000 less than originally planned. The rationale for the expense shift (or whatever is going on) should be presented in the status report, but this bigger picture supports that explanation. It might be something as simple as the Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 www.StickyMinds.com NOVEMBER 2008 BETTER SOFTWARE 37 http://www.StickyMinds.com
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