[37] in Project_DB
New project Status values and their rationale.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Mar 11 17:42:56 1997
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 17:42:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: project-db@MIT.EDU
Cc: wdc@MIT.EDU
Mike Barker, Tim McGovern, and I sat down with the old project status
values, the original Trans-It notes, and our accumulated experience
about project work flow to try and come up with a first cut of Project
Status values to go live with.
I present them in this note together with some underlying principles
that guide in setting and using the values.
If nobody has strenuous objection, I would like to go live with them
with the following process:
1. They appear in what we go live with on Arachne and ops-5.
2. The underlying project flow-model we are following gets written up in
a web page. (We have this documentation under construction and expect
it to be done in a day or two.)
3. We let everybody try out these values for a couple months.
4. I save and correlate feedback on the values over the trial period.
5. Version 2 comes out in three months with revised status values.
OK?
-wdc
----
Underlying Principles:
There are a set of specified status values to attempt to provide some
sort of uniform judgement of where each project is. Further detail is
expected to be reported in "Comment" fields that have been added to the
schema and user interface.
The given set of status values are not intended to be 100% correct since
that's impossible. They are intended to cover 80%, and to allow us time
to experiment and come up with a good 80%.
The status of a project recorded in the database represents "activity
currently under way". There are other ways to specify status, like
activity completed, or next activity to be entered. The choice of
"activity under way" seemed like the best 80% fit for projects we've had
experience with thus far.
The defined status values are present to help people understand, in
broad, well-defined strokes, where a project is.
A side benefit of the particular ones chosen is that we believe that
they will also help point out bottlenecks in the flow of work through
the organization, and will serve to validate existing project flows that
are working well.
The given descriptive meanings for the status values are intended to be
simple statements that are applied to projects with a little bit of
creativity.
There is one value "See Comment" for project leaders who are in the
process of suggesting new status values because none of the current ones
fit. When that value is used, there will be a comment filled in that
tells what the status is.
New project status values:
See Comment: None of the present status values fit. See the comments
with the project description instead.
Potential: An idea for a project.
Preplanning: A few people are doing an initial project description.
Business Case: Working out the business case for doing the project.
Conceptual Design: Fleshing out what the project will do.
Seeking Commitment: Seeking commitment from the sponsor to go forward.
Pending: Sponsor has committed to going forward, but the project is
not yet under way.
Requirements Analysis: The project is gathering and reviewing the
customer requirements
Prototype: The project team is building and reviewing a prototype.
Design: Figuring out how to do it.
Buy: Implementation through purchase is under way.
Build: Implementation through building is under way.
Internal Test: Implementation is functionally complete and being tested
internally by project team.
External Test: After passing internal test and correcting all known
show stopper bugs, the implementation has been given to testers outside
the project team.
Handoff: The internal and external testing of functionality is done. The
implementation is being reviewed for servicability and supportability.
Ready: Handoff review is complete. The implementation is ready for
production use and is awaiting roll-out to the customer.
Completed : The project has ended after successfully meeting its objectives.
On Hold: Work on the project has been suspended either temporarily or
indefinitely.
Terminated : The project was abandoned with significant objectives incomplete.
What do you think?
-wdc
