Project Monitoring and Control-CMMI with SCRUM methodology in action

The project monitoring and control process in CMMI® consist of all those activities that ensure that the approved project is going to be delivered in time, budget, required quality and with marginal risk involved. The process revolves around verification, validation and monitoring the considerable changes in the plan and the equivalent action control taken by the team for a corrective measure. This process also adhere the project progress so that immediate action takes place if something deviates significantly from the plan.

When the current plan deviates from the standard plan that we have made, then re-planning is done by establishing new agreements, meetings and clinging onto new mitigation strategies in the current project plan.

Is SCRUM a good implementation? While mapping this CMMI® Project Management Process Area to SCRUM Practices, it is made sure that development in software quality will make subsequent improvements like reduced rework, predictable milestones, measurable improvements of products and services and greater customer satisfaction. That is why it is institutionalized in the’ managed’ process (Level 2) category of CMMI® Level ladder.

Many Project managers are still unknown of various techniques by which we can together monitor and control the project management process. Monitoring includes:

• • Meeting with clients, supplier or contractor
• • Schedule and update Project Plan Gantt charts, pert charts and CPA
• • Achieving each milestone
• • Calculate Critical Ratios
• • Using Earned Value Analysis
• • Plan and re-plan as and when necessary

Now we are going to map the following practices to the process area ‘monitoring and control’ keeping in view the SCRUM methodology

Monitor Commitments to the plan

In SCRUM, commitments of each sprint are recognized through the Sprint Planning Meeting. These meetings that consist of Sprint Burn down structure and daily meetings .During each sprint, the team cannot accept any additional work from stakeholders or Product Owner.  The team itself updates the sprint backlogs in order to maintain the focus on the spring activities going in place. In this way they monitor if the commitments are going well with the stated plan.

Monitor Project Risks

A partially satisfied SCRUM practices though, monitoring the risk help the scrum master know what action he needs to take for it. In SCRUM, daily meetings benefit to identify the issues and dependencies so the risk associate with the software is identified but they cannot be analysed properly in this stage.

Monitor Data Management

Monitoring Project Data against the project plan we have made is an important practice but the SCRUM method comply no proper procedure for planning and tracking data management activity in CMMI model. No attention is been given.

Monitor Stakeholder Involvement

In SCRUM, stakeholder’s involvement tracking is carried out during project meetings by Scrum Master.  He is solely responsible to make the stakeholders understand to respect the rules and procedures that are defined in SCRUM.

Conduct Progress Reviews

The daily meeting scrum action is the most useful practice to analyse the performance, progress and quote the issues that may fall in place. In SCRUM methodology, the project control is carried out by frequent review meetings and enquiring about the progress from time to time.

Conduct Milestone Reviews

It’s a much satisfied practice in SCRUM methodology where accomplishments and results are reviewed at selected project milestones. These milestones are covered at the end of each sprint. There is a lot of time to filter the issues and dependencies at each end of the sprint that might adversely affect the project plan afterwards.

Examine Issues

During each milestone review meeting you will be able to analyze the issues and dependencies in great detail. It is the responsibility of the scrum master to take corrective action from the team to get into the details and sort out all the worms as the project expected quality and performance can’t be compromised in any case.

The Corrective action against Dependencies

Now the corrective action needs to be taken after all the issues are analysed and detected. Conducting Milestone review formula assists a lot in analysing and managing the impediments that eventually lead you towards the closure.

Thus CMMI® and SCRUM together make a good contribution. This blog will be a great source for those implementing CMMI® keeping in view the SCRUM method.