Having a schedule is a couple of points into your IT Project success. No matter how experienced a project manager is, if s/he fails to prepare a deliberate quality check milestone for the IT project s/he’s carrying out, it will flop!
So, as a project manager, you have to monitor your project at all the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) stages.
Companies love to give out a project schedule denoting what should be done at what time, for how long and by which person(s).
While project schedules would, for sure, place an organization on course and obligate it to do things at the right time, you’ve got to know whether you are doing the right thing! That is where the quality check milestones set in
To understand the project milestone checks, it is imperative that you calculate these metrics.
Total tasks: Includes the lowest level tasks, but does not extend to summary, subproject, zero baseline duration, and milestone tasks.
Complete tasks: These are the tasks in the schedule with an actual finish date.
Incomplete tasks: Includes all projects that lack a definite finish date.
Baseline Count: This is the number of all the Total Tasks that should be completed on or before the project status date.
- The Negative Float Check
This happens to be a very important check as it identifies all those tasks that may hinder completion of other tasks. As a project manager, you should have no negative floats. Otherwise, you will end up running in circles.
The danger with delays is that they could make otherwise great software consulting services firm to fall out with you.
- Hard Constraints Check
For any successful IT project, there have to be strict-deadline activities that have to be completed on time.
The hard-constraints activities are those that have to begin by a stipulated date. They also have to be done strictly by a given date.
As a rule of thumb, a successful IT project should not have more than 5 per cent of its tasks as ‘hard-constraints.’
Hard-constraints check enables the IT project team to complete crucial program stages in good time to give time for the oncoming activities.
- Logic check
Logically, all the activities of a project should have a predecessor and a successor. A great IT project has to be composed of not more than 5 per cent of its activities lacking either a predecessor or a successor activity.
IT projects are a sequence of activities knitted closely together to produce one logical product. As such, you should avoid ‘orphan activities.’
The logic check formula is (# of Tasks missing Logic) / (# of Incomplete Tasks) * 100.
- Baseline Execution index check
The BEI metric checks the number of activities completed at the present date in comparison to what the project schedule records as the number of activities that should be completed within the same time period.
This metric allows IT project managers to track their performance within the project.
- High Duration Check
This check ensures you identify those activities that take up 44 days and more. Once a project manager identifies these activities with long timelines, s/he further divides the tasks into smaller activities.
This way, they are more actionable and could be completed in the right time.
Conclusion
While starting a project with a strong schedule is an amazing way to begin your IT project, you will realize mid-course that the project schedule is not enough.
Most of the time you will realize either that your IT project was ambitiously scheduled or even that the amount of time for certain tasks was either set low or high.
As an astute professional IT project manager, you should ensure that you have a valid quality checks to keep you on track within your project schedule.
