-
When Reality Hits - Project Managers Roll With It
February 11, 2012
-
When IT Is Your Company’s “Piggy Bank”
February 10, 2012
-
4 Key Things a Project Manager Must Do
February 10, 2012
-
Essential Project Management
February 10, 2012
-
8 Traits of Top Project Managers - Part 1
February 9, 2012
-
Agile Project Management - Engaging Your Customer!
February 9, 2012
-
9 Tips to Avoid Traps in Project Planning
February 9, 2012
-
Why Projects Succeed - Executive Sponsorship
February 8, 2012
-
On Customer Participation in Agile Projects
February 8, 2012
-
A Project Charter for Lazy Teams
February 8, 2012
How to Use Inch-Pebbles for Building Your Project Schedule - Introduction
August 8, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices, Scheduling
How to Use Inch-Pebbles for Building Your Project Schedule - Introduction (#1 in the series How to Use Inch-Pebbles When You Think You Can’t)
By Johanna Rothman
“When will the project be ready for Beta?”
“I think it will be ready next month. We’re more than 90% done.”
“NEXT MONTH? You said ‘next month’ last month. You said you were more than 90% done last month too. We’re slipping this project a month every month. WHEN will you be done with this project?”
Many of us have had similar conversations, either as the senior manager wanting information, or as the beleaguered project manager. I prefer to avoid this conversation entirely, so I use inch-pebbles to at least determine all the tasks and their duration to know when I can meet a milestone.
Inch-pebbles, or miniature milestones, are defined as a best practice. Inch-pebbles are the breakdown of each task into very small components, no more than two days in duration, maybe only one day long. Inch-pebbles are either done or not done; they are not some percentage complete. Collections of inch-pebbles are the multiple-day or multiple-week tasks that we normally think of, when we build project schedules.
Some of us successfully use inch-pebbles to plan and monitor software projects. We use inch-pebbles to reduce the risk of missing the project schedule due to missing tasks. One frequent cause of missing tasks is the rework required. Commonly, project managers underestimate the amount of rework to do on a project. We may, for example, forget some piece of implementation or testing that we need to accomplish. When we do that, either we miss the scheduled delivery date because we completed the work anyway, or we run the risk of introducing defects by not following our normal methods of producing software. Using inch-pebbles can help us avoid such problems.
But while inch-pebbles may be a best practice, they’re not commonly used. Sometimes, people don’t want to use inch-pebbles. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out how to use them. Nevertheless, while inch-pebbles may not be completely appropriate for every projects phase, every project can benefit from inch-pebbles at some point in its duration.
Inch-pebbles are useful when you know what you have to do. For many development tasks, you know what to do. But what happens when you don’t know what to do? What do you do then?
This article is an excerpt from the article “How to Use Inch-Pebbles When You Think You Can’t”, which can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Howinch-pebbles.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.
Related Articles
- Decompose Tasks to Inch-pebble Granularity
- Assess the Project You're Working On For Proper Inch-Pebble Scheduling
- Successfully Interviewing Your Project Customer and Gathering Project Requirements - Part I - Introduction
- A Project Management Primer - Scope - Introduction
- Introduction to Project Managment
feel free to leave a comment
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All fields marked with " * " are required.
- Agile Project Management
- Ask the Hut
- Certification
- Change Management
- Communications Management
- Computer Based Information Systems
- Concepts
- Corporate Transformation
- Cost Management
- Critical Chain Project Management
- Delegation
- History
- HR Management
- Implementing Project Management
- Integration Management
- Lessons Learned
- Management
- Miscellaneous
- People Issues
- PMBOK
- PRINCE2
- Procurement Management
- Program Management
- Project Lifecycle Phases
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management as a Career
- Project Management Best Practices
- Project Management Charts
- Project Management Definitions
- Project Management Ethics
- Project Management for Beginners
- Project Management Guides
- Project Management Musings
- Project Management Office
- Project Management Proposals
- Project Management Templates
- Project Portfolio Management
- Project Workforce Management
- Quality Management
- Requirements Management
- Risk Management
- Scheduling
- Scope Management
- SCRUM
- Soft Management
- Time Management
- Training
- Uncategorized
1 person has left a comment
[...] do believe in small steps for projects. I’ve long been an advocate of inch-pebbles, of standup meetings, of iterations and incremental development. I love knowing what done means, [...]