Task: Monitor and Report Project Status
This task describes how to capture the current status of the project, evaluate that status against the project plans, and provide periodic updates on the project status.
Purpose
  • Provide regular updates on project status for review by project governance authorities 
  • Escalate issues to project governance authorities
Relationships
Steps
Capture Work Status
Purpose Collect quality and progress information on the project for assessing current status 

In this step, the responsible role captures primitive metrics on the progress of project work and product quality.Typically, team members provide the following information:

  • Effort booked against activities
  • Estimated effort to complete each activity for which they are responsible
  • Tasks completed
  • Deliverables published
  • Issues arising that require management attention (from review records, for example).
Derive progress indicators

In order to properly assess the project's progress in relation to the plans, the responsible role "rolls-up" the primitive metrics reported by the team to provide a full picture of the project's progress.

Derive quality indicators

In addition to monitoring the work progress, the responsible role also monitors the quality of the project work products. Quality metrics are consolidated to provide an overall picture of the project's status compared to its stated quality objectives.

Evaluate indicators vs. plans

Having derived the project's progress and quality indicators, the responsible role compares these against the expected state of the project as defined by project plans. At this point the responsible role will evaluate the following:

  • Have all planned tasks been completed?
  • Have all work products been published as planned?
  • Is the estimated effort to complete tasks that are "in progress" within plan?
  • Are quality metrics (e.g. open defect counts) within planned tolerances?
  • Have project plans and other work products been reviewed to ensure there are no inconsistencies with the project requirements? Have all sources of identified inconsistencies been documented?
  • Have all plans that affect the project been reviewed to understand project commitments?
  • Have corrective actions been analyzed to determine their effectiveness?

The responsible role will also review project risks to decide whether any risk mitigation strategies should be activated at this time.

The responsible role, in reviewing progress against the Iteration Plan, should always have in mind that an iteration is timeboxed, and start to consider and report what functionality can be omitted from an iteration, if it appears the original plan cannot be achieved, rather than reporting a schedule slip for the iteration.

Any issues that have been reported are tracked and escalated in accordance with the project's process.

Prepare Status Assessment
Purpose Document the current project status for review by governance authorities

Status Assessment should address the following:

Technical progress: Work completed during this reporting period (e.g. tasks completed, work products delivered). Highlight any slippage.

For the current iteration, report any possible change in scope or quality (in terms of discovered defects that will not be rectified) required to keep the iteration to the planned end date (i.e. to keep it "timeboxed").

 
Budget progress: Spending to date. Highlight any cost over-runs. 
Progress against scheduled milestones: Were scheduled milestones achieved? 
Total project/product scope:  Report on the revised estimate for the project scope based on work done and estimates to complete work in progress. 
Personnel/staffing status:  Status of personnel. Report any issues or concerns. 
Risk status:  Are any risks becoming realized? 
Issues arising:  Project issues requiring resolution by governance authorities. Recommend potential solutions for consideration. 
Action items:  A list of action items from previous status assessments and their current status. 
Conduct Project Status Review Meeting

The Project Review Status meeting is a regularly scheduled status meeting where the project progress, issues, and risks are reviewed with governance authorities. The meeting is also used as a forum for raising issues that are beyond scope of the team to resolve.

The presentation should cover:

  • Major project milestones that have been achieved
  • Progress deviations from the targets in the project plan
  • Schedule/effort variances
  • Variances in spending vs. budget
  • Changes in the estimated scope of work
  • Variances in quality metrics
  • Status of project risks:
  • Any existing risks that have become realized
  • Any new risks that have been identified
  • Issues arising - usually these are problems that must be escalated for resolution
  • Follow-up from previous project reviews - status of action items from previous meetings
  • Upcoming project milestones
Properties
Multiple Occurrences
Event Driven
Ongoing
Optional
Planned
Repeatable
More Information
Guidelines