Delays due to lack of alignment with project objectives

Some months ago we were reviewing a project that had continuous delays with different reasons for delay and without delivering builds as expected.

I sat with the PM to review the schedule and the different modules to deliver.

We sent the schedule to the trash and started another one. We don’t need to deliver each month to the client, but we need to ensure the delivery of the final product at the end of October, so we defined a sprint each month.

We defined the product backlog in functional modules, no using the architecture structure that was supposed to be already built. We fit the modules using the original estimation of hours provided to the project by the SMEs: The project will assume current delay, but not more, new delays will be assumed by team.

We also let some free time to complete this common part of the application in order to don’t crash the quality of the architecture, and assigned an unique person as responsible of this activities.

I was asking the junior PM how he was ‘dispatching’/’gathering’ the ‘work to be done’/’done’, and we change the way he was doing; it was not done properly, he didn’t get the compromise of the delivery from his team. No problem man, we established a weekly meeting to review the coming week and a daily meeting to review the work to be done on the current week (review problems, consider minor changes, share evolution…).

On the first meeting, the new approach on the execution of the project, explaining all the aspects mentioned above and defining a responsible to each module: main objective, ensure the responsibility of the delivery on each responsible.

2 months later…

Ee have a new little delay on the backlog, but it’s something we will recuperate soon. The important thing is that people is aligned with the product to be delivered and the team has real speed of development.

The junior PM is the more happy person in the world, he has seen how the efficiency of his work has increased.

Agile works?? I don’t know, what I know is people needs to be aligned with the objectives and that you need to provide the team a realistic way to deliver, based on real world.

If you don’t ask a person the move a mountain of sand in one time, why do you do ask it with a software solution?