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Define the Milestones and Handoffs - Milestones

May 13, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Communications Management, HR Management, Project Management Best Practices, Project Milestones

Define the Milestones and Handoffs - Milestones (#4 in the series Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices)
By Johanna Rothman

Not only do we have to agree on our project’s terms and milestones; we need to make sure everyone agrees on what the milestones mean. Many years ago, as a program manager, trying to bring together project components from Boston, Los Angeles, and Japan. The technical leads and I were working on the schedule. Everything was smooth until we tried to agree on the first milestone: feature freeze. To the Boston team, feature freeze meant that the low-level design was complete. However, to the Los Angeles team, feature freeze meant that they had a good idea of the high level design. The Los Angeles group couldn’t understand why Boston would want complete module interface designs–Los Angeles wanted maximum flexibility to add features to the product as late as possible. The Boston and Japan teams wanted to define the features early, and freeze the interfaces as early as possible, to allow for the customization of the product for Japan.

I brought the technical leads together to talk about what each group needed and when. Initially, the Japanese technical lead was reticent to express his views, concerned that he was pushing his perspective on the entire team. We revisited the project requirements: release the English and Japanese versions of the product within the same calendar month, and create a public API for the English language market. We didn’t have time to retrofit features in for the Japanese market.

Instead of pushing for a resolution, I asked each team lead to talk about their problems and what would create a solution for their problems. The Boston team needed to freeze the API in time for the Japan team to develop their customizations and for the writers to document the product. The Los Angeles team needed to create enough product infrastructure that they wouldn’t have to change the API for the next release. The Japanese team needed to modify the GUI and the data structures for the Japanese market. The later Boston and Japan defined the features, the harder their jobs were. The earlier the Los Angeles team defined the features, the harder their job was. Once we realized that we were all on the same project, but we had different goals, we were able to better articulate what we wanted at which time.

As a project team, we were able to develop our major milestones together, by focusing on interim results (what did each group absolutely need by when?). It took us about a week to come to a consensus about what each milestone meant, especially “freeze” milestones, and how we knew we’d met those milestones. Not everyone liked the whole schedule, but we could all live with it.

I call this technique of defining milestones by the results you want “discuss and publish”. Some teams chose to define interim milestones in addition to the milestones defined in the overall project plan. When the teams agree on what each project milestone means, you can develop a joint project schedule, and understand what you have to do achieve those milestones.

Original article can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Multiculturalprojects.html

Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.

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