Managing Projects with Intelligence
Paul Gerrard · 2004
This paper sets out some key principles for project management. Managers should be focused at all times on the goal of their project and the risks that threaten them. Projects need to manage goals, not activities to ensure work is done, deliverables are delivered and they are acceptable. The Project Intelligence concept aims to give project and stakeholder management visibility of project risks, their intermediate and final goals and progress towards them. Project and stakeholder management are the main customer of Project Intelligence. Early goal and risk analysis enables management to have influence over the way projects are tested and how the gathering of intelligence will be performed. Intelligence is gathered throughout the project lifecycle, from early reviews to final acceptance testing. The intelligence gathered, enables project and stakeholder management to judge how and whether progress is being made. Further, when problems do arise, the intelligence gives an insight into how the current challenges can be overcome. No longer does the project manager have to make a case for slipping a task, accepting or rejecting a deliverable or releasing into production. The intelligence should make those cases self-evident. Management must learn to appreciate what Project Intelligence can do for them. It dramatically enhances the value of testing to their projects and enables them to manage their projects with more confidence. Project Intelligence gives management better visibility of progress and enables them to make significantly better-informed decisions. Finally, Project Intelligence is usable in ALL development methodologies. There is an overhead perhaps in the early goal and risk analysis, but this is simply better test practice anyway. The intelligence concept integrates well with risk-oriented project management methods, as these methods pay more attention to the test activities associated with all project deliverables. Project Intelligence simply aims to enhance the understanding of the test process and improve the reporting done by all test activities.