Task: Deploy the Measurement System
This task addresses the perfromance measurement system deployment, including detailed planning, preparing users, deploying hardware and software, and starting the collection of the metrics.
Purpose
To prepare and implement a set of measures by making them available to the appropriate management levels and project teams.
Relationships
RolesPrimary: Additional: Assisting:
InputsMandatory: Optional:
  • None
External:
  • None
Main Description

A multi-tiered measurement system is deployed in an incremental or phased approach. Start with a pilot approach to validate a set of derived measures within an environment to capture best practices specific to a particular organization or culture. By piloting the measurement system, the development team identifies improvements before deploying to the larger organization. This learning provides a loop back to the team (management and staff) that is responsible for the measurement system. It also works out issues that make a change difficult.

After adjustments from a pilot deployment, make the measures available to a broader audience. This can be by line of business, department, project types or whatever makes sense for the organization. The size of the organization affects the speed at which the measurement system can be effectively deployed.

Steps
Communicate and Get Agreement on Resources and Schedule

Using a pilot approach to deploy a measurement system across an organization allows the measurement team to understand the needs for resources and effort.

This information is used to plan each increment of the rollout. Before any incremental rollout, develop a plan that identifies tasks and responsible resources for key stages:

  • Hardware setup, software installation steps, and verification for individual teams
  • Training of project team members and management
  • Use of the measurement system

The identified tasks should be integrated into the overall project plan for the deployment.

To assist in getting agreement, clearly articulate the business and organizational objectives that the measurement system supports. Explain why that is important to the business, to the organization, and to each individual. Get agreement on these goals along with interim checkpoints for showing progress on longer efforts, typically more than 30 days ahead.

Deploy the Infrastructure
The infrastructure includes the hardware, software, and human resources necessary to effectively deploy the measurement system. These assets are deployed to various teams to assist them in capturing metrics.
Prepare the Team

Train whoever is required to maintain, analyze, and report on the metrics. Typically, this does not require a significant amount of time for any single individual. Consider these elements when deciding on the necessary training:

  • Installation, upgrades, problem solving for associated hardware and software
  • Any manual collection and calculations necessary to produce a metric
  • Creation of reports for displaying derived measures, including changes to organizational templates at both the management and project levels
  • How to include metric reports in project status reporting, along with appropriate timing and interpretation
  • Appropriate understanding that can be drawn from each derived measure 
  • Use of aggregated values from across multiple projects and the appropriate interpretations for these indicators
  • Relationships between measures and their tracing to organizational and business goals

Not everyone needs to be trained on every aspect of the measurement system, and not everyone needs to be trained. Focus on those who are responsible for maintenance, reporting, or analysis of the metrics.

Provide Initial Mentoring Support
Depending on the organization, it may be necessary to provide support to those who are defining, implementing, analyzing, and reporting on the measurement system. Also, do a quick assessment of those who need mentoring so that they can make the appropriate decisions before deploying the measurement system. When deploying in an incremental fashion to an organization, a quick assessment should be part of the planning for each increment.
Properties
Multiple Occurrences
Event Driven
Ongoing
Optional
Planned
Repeatable