Inch-Pebbles
Several years ago, Johanna Rothman wrote a facinating article on how to use the concept of Inch Pebbles as a way to measure the progress of a project. The idea is to define tasks to create the project's deliverables for the project so that they typically last a day or two. You can then track - was the work done or now. There is no 50% done. As a project or resource manager, I would not have to track remaining hours - instead I can track done or not along with any issues that may be blocking completion of the task.
I recently emailed Johanna and she still swears by Inch-Pebbles. It makes a lot of sense. More to follow...
I recently emailed Johanna and she still swears by Inch-Pebbles. It makes a lot of sense. More to follow...
posted by Bill Ramos at
9:26 PM
1 Comments:
As Johanna references, the inch pebble concept came from Norm Brown of the Software Program Managers Network (He's since moved on). The concecpt of small incremental deliverables is baked into the Integrated Master Plan / Integrated Master Schedule (IMP/IMS) process now in use in DoD and other agencies.
Inch Pebbles have been advanced to Significant Accomplishments and their Accompishment Criteria in IMP/IMS and lost some of their luster in aerospace, since they themselves did not describe explicitly the increasing matuirty of the project or its products.
But as a concept its a nice fit with the latter development of agile and small incremental deliverables. The convergence of agile and other apporaches to project management continues.
By
Glen B Alleman, at 7:03 AM
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