A checklist for assessing the credibility of the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB)
When we hear about solutions looking for problems to solve like multiple WBSs, separation of Itertaive and Incremental approaches and tools suggested in the absence of a domain, and examples of processes in the lack of tangible evidence of their applicability to a problem.
Here is a checklist that mandates positive answers if there is any chance of increasing the probability of success with these suggestions.
? If the PM can't answer these questions, then the project should be scheduled for immediate review:
- Do you have a current, credible activity network supported by a WBS?
- Do you have a current, credible schedule and budget?
- Do you know what deliverables you are accountable for?
- Can you list the top ten risks?
- Do you know your schedule compression percentage?
- What is the estimated size of your deliverables? How were these derived?
- Do we have a current and credible activity network supported by a Work Breakdown Structure?
- Do you know the percentage of external dependencies that are not under your control?
- Does your staff have sufficient expertise in the project domain?
- Have you identified adequate staff to allocate to scheduled tasks properly?
? Do we have a current and credible activity network supported by a Work Breakdown Structure?
- Have the critical path items been identified?
- What explicit provisions have been made for work, not in the Work Breakdown Structure?
- Does the activity network clearly organize, define, and graphically display the work to be accomplished?
- Does the top–level activity network graphically describe the project from start to finish, including all the dependencies?
- Does the lowest–level WBS show work packages with measurable tasks and short duration?
- Do the lower–level objectives fully support project objectives?
- Does each task on the network have a well–defined deliverable?
- Is each work package under budget control (expressed in labor hours, dollars, and other numerical units)?
? Do we have a credible schedule and budget for the identified work?
- Is the schedule based on a project/activity network supported with a WBS??
- Is the schedule based on realistic historical, quantitative performance estimates??
- Does the schedule provide time for holidays, vacations, sick days, etc.??
- Does the schedule allow for all the necessary quality assurance activities??
- Does the schedule account for resource overlap??
- Is the next three to six months' schedule as detailed as possible??
- Is the schedule consistently updated at all levels in the Gantt, PERT, and Critical Path views??
- Is the budget based on the schedule and required resources over time??
- Can the schedule and budget be performed?
? Do you know what capabilities you are responsible for delivering?
- Are the system's operational requirements specified?
- Are definitions of what the system must do to support the solution delivery specified?
- Are system interfaces specified and appropriately prototyped?
- Is selecting the capabilities' architecture traceable to the organization's operational characteristics?
- Are descriptions of the organization's environment and relationships of the capabilities to the business unit functional processes specified?
- Are specific new capabilities explicitly defined?
- Do you know if specific acceptance and delivery requirements are explicitly defined?
- Do joint teams of providers and users agree to user requirements at corporate and business unit tiers?
- Are system requirements traceable through the capabilities design?
? Can we list the current top ten project risks?
- Has a Risk Management role been assigned to your project?
- Are risks determined through established risk identification, assessment, and mitigation processes?
- Is there a "database" that includes all non–negligible risks regarding probability, earliest expected visible symptom, estimated and actual schedule, and cost effects?
- Are all project personnel encouraged to become risk identifiers?
- Do you know if correction plans are written, followed up, and reported?
- Is the top ten risk list's " database " updated regularly?
- Are transfers of all deliverables to operational status controlled?
- Are user requirements reasonably stable?
- Do you know the risks that are changing over time?
? Do we know the percentage of schedule compression for each capability?
- Has the schedule been constructed bottom-up from quantitative estimates rather than predetermined dates?
- Has the schedule been modified when significant modifications in the proposed capabilities have occurred?
- Have staff and contractors received training in the principal domain area and applications?
- Have detailed task–and process-level design specifications been created for maximum parallel rollout effort?
- Does the project avoid extreme dependence on specific individuals?
- Are people working irregular hours?
- Do you know the historical schedule compression percentage on similar projects and the results of those projects?
- Is any part of the schedule compression based on new technologies?
- Has the percentage of application functionality been decreased in proportion to the rate of schedule compression?
? Do we know the estimated cost and effort of the capability deliverables?
- Do you know if the project scope has been established?
- Were measurements from previous projects used as a basis for size estimates?
- Were complexity measures or functional measures used as a basis for estimates?
- Are the subject matter experts who do the estimating experienced in the domain area?
- Were estimates of project size corroborated by an estimate verification tool?
- Are estimates regularly updated to reflect software development realities?
? Do we know the estimated cost and effort of the capability deliverables?
- Do you know if the project scope has been established?
- Were measurements from previous projects used as a basis for size estimates?
- Were complexity measures or functional measures used as a basis for estimates?
- Are the subject matter experts who do the estimating experienced in the domain area?
- Were estimates of project size corroborated by an estimate verification tool?
- Are estimates regularly updated to reflect software development realities?
? Do we know the percentage of service deliverables that are not under our control?
- Has each external customer for the deliverables of the services been identified?
- Have critical dependencies of each external customer's services deliverables been documented?
- Has each external service's deliverables been ranked based on potential project impact?
- Have procedures been established to monitor external customer deliverables until the risk is eliminated or substantially reduced?
- Have agreements with the external customer business units been reached and documented?
? Does our staff have sufficient expertise in the project domains??
- Do we know what the user needs, wants, and expects?
- Does the staffing plan include a list of the critical expertise areas and the estimated personnel needed?
- Do most of the project staff have experience with the specific type of capability being developed?
- Would the developers be able to proceed without undue requests for additional time and cost to help resolve technical problems?
- Do the developers understand their project role, and are they committed to its success?
- Are the developers knowledgeable in domain engineering – choosing the best model for the project and using it throughout design, code, and testing?
- Is there a domain area expert assigned to each domain?
? Have we identified adequate staff for the scheduled tasks at the right time?
- Do we have sufficient staff to support the tasks identified in the activity network?
- Is the staffing plan based on historical data on the level of effort or staff months on similar projects?
- Do we have adequate staffing for the current and scheduled tasks in the next two months?
- Have alternative staff buildup approaches been planned?
- Does the staff buildup rate match the rate at which the project leaders identify unsolved problems?
- Is there sufficient range and coverage of skills in the project?
- Is adequate time allocated for staff vacations, sick leave, training, and education?
- Are staffing plans regularly updated to reflect reality?
