I attended a Certified ScrumMaster training class this year delivered by Lithespeed. The class was very valuable, and I want to share a tool, trade-off matrix, to help set customer and team expectations. In my opinion this is a tool that should be used on all projects early in the planning stage. Here is an example of a trade-off matrix.
|
Fixed |
Firm |
Flexible |
Target |
|
| Scope |
X |
All 30 Use Cases Identified |
||
| Time |
X |
3-6 months |
||
| Budget |
X |
$500k |
||
| Defects |
X |
2 Large Bugs per month is acceptable |
By documenting this at the beginning of a project, the project sponsor and all project stakeholders (including project team members) have a clear view of what project success looks like. In the example above success is implementing all features, within a budget close to $500k and somewhere within 3-6 months. In addition the sponsor is OK with 2 large bugs a month.
You may find that a project sponsor wants everything “Fixed.” By using this matrix to illustrate the triple constraint it helps drives your discussion explaining why there needs to be a trade-off.
I plan on using this to help define success. Please share any tools you use.
5 Comments
Thanks for sharing. I presume there is some kind of method of prioritising, otherwise everything jut ends up being a fixed or firm tagret, right?
Great tool. We just delivered a major version for our Sales Force Automation system today and after the presentations I spent one hour discussing if it was a success or a partial success with my boss. From my point of view, when I’ve got the project, we were in a very hard situation, the relationship with the costumer (internal) was horrible after two very bad scoped versions (not by me!). All he wanted at that time was to deliver something good to the costumer as fast as possible and he accepted the risk of investing only part of the time needed to a good analysis before jumping to programming. Today, 3 months later we have an improved process and a better team assemblage and having a bad scope is not acceptable anymore, but he forgot how he felt at that time and is comparing the project results with his new expectation. If I had a matrix like this at that time, it would be easy for us to remember what success meant at the time we started the project. Thanks for the tool. Kerber – ITBA – Digitro technology http://www.digitro.com http://www.kerber.com.br
Claudio,
That’s it! I’m sorry you are not being rewarded for your efforts, but hopefully next time you can use this matrix to help everyone realize a great success. Keep it up!
Today is may 28, 2009 and this great tool saved my skin again.
Great to hear from you Kerber and I’m glad the trade-off matrix continues to help you out!
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