(stirring music)
- Hey, I'm Shyamala.
Did you know that over the past two years,
the Meeting House community
has raised over $530,000 in Peace Cards
and put together over 2,700 Relief Kits
to assist families affected by unrest in Jordan and Syria?
Last year, we assembled over 1,000 Relief Kits
specifically for families affected by the Syrian crisis.
These kits provide simple items and meet basic needs
to those who have suffered tremendously.
We also gave over $260,000 in Peace Cards last year,
which was used to support programs such as
Emergency Preparedness and Response Teams,
Jos Peace Institute,
and Circle of Support and Accountability,
and Youth H20 Project in Ontario.
These Peace Cards and Relief Kits are an important way
for us to take action and show love and compassion
to some of the most vulnerable people in the world.
And now, it's time for this year's Peacemakers campaign.
Our goal this year is to raise $260,000 in Peace Cards
and assemble 1,000 Relief Kits.
But even more importantly than that,
we want our community to invest in these stories
that we have the opportunity and privilege to be a part of.
Take the time to learn and talk about
the stories and the people that we get to love
through this campaign.
It's not just about the money,
this is our chance to love the most vulnerable in this world
and to actually see lives transformed.
Through Peacemakers we have the privilege
to partner with God in the restorative vision
that he has for all creation.
(inspiring music)
For more infomation >> Peacemakers 2019 | Launch Video - Duration: 2:14.-------------------------------------------
My first Gacha video! - Duration: 0:09.
For more infomation >> My first Gacha video! - Duration: 0:09. -------------------------------------------
How to Track Projects Effectively | Video Course | TeamGantt - Duration: 21:37.
(lively music)
- Hi and welcome back to the Art & Science
of Leading Projects.
Today, I'm going to talk to you about project requirements.
It's a term that haunts me still
because of a bad experience I had
with really poorly written and poorly tracked requirements.
They're a part of a project I inherited
very early in my career.
I'll spare you the details, but basically,
they were half written, the project was about 90% complete,
and the stakeholders started asking where some things were
and why what was there was not working
as they had expected.
I had to jump in and figure it out.
So I resurrected the requirements document,
discussed them with the stakeholders,
and recorded a whole new set of priorities.
We used that to discuss an increase
in scope and timing.
But just taking that step back
saved me a lot of stress and confusion.
My situation isn't uncommon.
Very often, projects fail due to poorly managed requirements
or even a lack of requirements.
I'm not sure if that's because people are scared
to ask questions of one another on projects
or if they just don't think to do it.
I do know that if your project is complex
or if it changes often
or even if your team and stakeholders
are not great communicators,
working without requirements
will definitely be painful.
Okay, so if you're new to this,
you might be wondering what requirements actually are.
So thanks for hanging on.
And let me explain.
A requirement is a document or a statement
that defines what must be achieved or created
on a project.
They're often also referred to as use cases,
features, or even functional requirements.
It essentially defines an overall goal
of what a product must do,
what it should look like,
and how it should function.
I've mostly seen requirements to find
as detailed text in a spreadsheet
or as annotations on a design or schematic.
But you might decide to look at them
in a different way.
Essentially, the goal is to make sure
you're able to communicate the information
the team needs to design,
build, and test a product.
Or even just a piece of it.
Requirements are also great for setting expectations
with clients or stakeholders
to make sure they're clear on what they're going to get.
In that respect, it makes it easy to decide
if something is complete or not.
Plus, if a stakeholder decided to add a feature or requests
and change the project,
you can refer to your scope and requirements
to make a decision about priority
or if scope increases are needed.
Requirements in whatever form they take
are really essential to building a product or service,
because they help set expectations
and align teams and stakeholders.
Without them, there's a strong chance
that you could produce an incomplete or defective product.
Or worse, one that your stakeholders won't accept at all.
So while they take some time to produce,
it will be well worth your time spent
gathering and managing them.
That said, not all teams document and manage requirements,
and that's okay.
As long as you're comfortable with managing
the details on your project
without having them documented.
Afterall, not all projects are complex
and not all project leaders feel the need
to document and manage requirements.
If your team is agile and your projects
are fairly loose,
you'll be fine without documented requirements.
Chances are, you're using stories or epics.
And those are pretty much the same thing as requirements.
But if you're dealing with complex projects
with large scopes and budgets
along with tight deadlines,
you might wanna think about how requirements can help you.
Alright, are you sold on the need for requirements yet?
Let's talk about how you can document
and manage requirements in four steps.
Gathering and documenting,
alignment, tracking and managing change,
and confirming.
Let's dig in.
The first step is gathering and documenting requirements.
And that's a fancy way of saying,
how the heck are we gonna figure out
exactly what we're supposed to be doing here?
But before I get into the process
of gathering and documenting,
I think it's important to talk about
what a good requirement looks like.
First and foremost, a good requirement
should be valuable and actionable.
That means that while it should define the goal or need,
it should also detail how you'll meet that goal.
Also, it should be written in plain language
so everyone involved can actually understand what it means.
Like I said earlier, a format in language
may vary by team.
It can be sketches of what's intended.
They can be structured in statements
that say what it should do.
They can also be high level requirements
that state an overall goal and have sub requirements
with hyper specific detail that rolls up to them.
You'll probably start high level
then dig deeper as you get into the work.
And that's a good way of approaching requirements.
Because what you know about the project
will evolve over time
as the team works through each goal.
And you'll get to a level of detail
that will help your team to execute
on each requirement accurately.
At a high level, it's important for a member
that good requirements need to be concise and specific
and simply explain what's needed.
Okay, now let's talk about how to figure out
what those requirements actually are.
Well, it's gotta start with a statement
about the project goals,
and what exactly the business and its stakeholders
expect the final product to do.
So you have to get some pretty high level info first
and start digging.
Sounds easy, but it can be a little bit like pulling teeth.
It's important to remember that not all stakeholders
think like you do in terms of features,
functionality and time to build.
In fact, it could be a big black box for them.
So this is your chance to connect their business goals
and requirements to your project.
The best way to understand what your stakeholders
actually want is to ask questions.
If you watched class three on estimating,
you know that I'm not afraid of asking a bunch of questions
to make sure I can be as accurate as possible.
You shouldn't be afraid of asking questions either,
especially if it will help you to gain clarity
with your requirements.
Here's the thing.
You can't necessarily take a cookie cutter approach
to every project.
Sure, you may have some core questions to use,
but before you dump a set of questions
on your stakeholders, be sure you understand
what you're asking and why.
It maybe helpful to ask yourself some questions
about what exists already
in terms of supporting documentation
in your stakeholders.
If you're not sure you're thinking
about this in the right way,
check out the pre-requirements question download,
as well as the sample requirements checklist,
which is a real template I've used
on web design projects in the past.
My hope is that those documents
will give you an example of how you might start
to organize your thoughts
and draw out the needs of any project.
It's really about being thorough.
The answers to your questions will eventually turn
into expected interactions,
features, or functionalities
that will help you to begin your requirements documentation.
So set yourself up for future alterations
of your document by formatting these responses
in a readable, shareable format.
This will set the expectation
of what goals the project will meet
and how what you will deliver will map back to those goals.
The best way to document these requirements
is in a spreadsheet or a list that works for your team.
Essentially, what you must document are:
requirement name and number,
which is a unique name that describes
what is being discussed
and can be easily referred to.
You'll want to number these in case you have a lot of them.
So you can easily find them in your document.
Second is a requirement description,
which is a simple statement that defines
the business need the requirement fulfills.
Then there's the category which is a group identifier
for similar requirements that all project resources
will understand.
This could be the section in your sitemap,
a part of your product, a technology,
or whatever other category
that makes sense to you and your team.
Last is notes, which is a place to capture questions
you have for your stakeholders
that will surface as a requirement evolves.
As soon as you've documented
the high level of a business requirements,
you're ready to compile the questions you need to ask
to get into the true details.
Start broad with a top level question about functionality
and use the response to dig deeper.
Here's an example with followup questions
that could arise.
Will your site require users to log in?
Does registration require payment?
Will the site display a logged-in user's name?
First and last name, or just the username?
Where's login information stored currently?
Will it stay there?
Do logged-in users have access to information
or functionality that non-logged-in users have?
What happens if someone forgets a password?
Do you have error states currently designed
into the system?
As you can see, there's several questions
that could come out of one single response.
And each response could add requirements to your work.
That means that one simple yes or no answer
could have scope or budget implications attached to it.
Therefore, the exercise is really important
in understanding what your team can do within your scope.
And that's why a requirements checklist,
similar to the example download,
can be really helpful.
As soon as you've determined all answers
related to a piece of functionality,
add it to your requirements doc.
Arguably, this step in the process
will take a lot of time.
But again, it can be worth that time spent
if it helps you to avoid issues with scope creep
and even communications.
Alright, let's move on to step two - alignment.
This is the step that feels like it could take an hour
but can last weeks if you don't handle it well.
There's no playbook for how to gain
alignment on requirements,
because it really depends on the size
and intensity of your project
and how you engage with your stakeholders.
My suggestion is to gain consensus on high level goals
and requirements
and leave the detail to the team.
But that requires a lot of trust
between the stakeholder team and the project team.
If your stakeholders wanna be in the weeds,
plan for some additional time
to discuss, document, and revise the requirements.
But mostly, what you want here
is buy in on approach, your overall approach
on what's included.
This is gonna help you to better plan your project,
control your scope, and say,
sorry, we can't add that new request
without looking at our requirements and scope
to see where it fits.
And that sounds pretty powerful to me.
So let's move on to step three,
which is tracking and managing.
Okay, so this isn't really a step
as much as a reminder to stay updated.
Projects get busy and we forget about this kind of stuff.
But if you're not keeping all
of your documentation up to date,
there's really a good chance that you'll forget a detail
and it will come back to get you.
We all know that projects change.
That doesn't always mean it changed your requirements,
but keep it in mind when new requests pop up.
So make the time to get all of your administrative work in
while you're doing everything else on projects.
When you think about it,
the really cool part about requirements
is that when you manage them through a project,
you get to see something that started as an idea,
a discussion about goals, and then that being formalized
into writing, and taking it something that's designed,
built, tested, and functioning in the world
just the way it was intended to be.
If you truly wanna do a good job with that,
you'll take copious notes
and update them in your requirements documentation.
And that brings me back to format.
There are a lot of great ticketing systems out there
that can help you manage your requirements.
You can also use TeamGantt to help communicate requirements
and even record changes over time.
So you have to know that things are going to change
with your projects.
And you have to expect it and adapt to it.
And one more time, you have to document those changes.
Alright, the last step is confirming.
If you nailed your requirements and kept them updated,
chances are, you'll nail QA and release.
That's because when you take ideas
and get specific about them,
you leave less room for error
or even misinterpretation.
And that makes the quality assurance process easy too.
So there are a few different ways you can close
or complete requirements.
And the process for it will depend on how you like to work.
First, like I mentioned earlier,
you can use TeamGantt to document
and track requirements.
In fact, our development at TeamGantt
uses notes and discussions to track requirements
through their sprint process.
I recruited one of TeamGantt's founders,
John Correlli, to walk through how it's done.
Check it out.
- [John] How you handle technical requirements
is crucial to how efficient your team performs.
Too little information
and they'll spend their time trying to gather
the missing requirements.
Too verbose and your team will have to sort
through the details to pull out the information
that's important to them.
Each team is different.
And it's up to you to find a sweet spot
for you and your team.
Today, I'll show you two examples of how we're managing
requirements within the dev team here at TeamGantt.
The first will cover new features,
and the second will be for a bug fix.
However, before we jump into these specific tasks,
I like to say we have a pretty simple
and straightforward approach.
Requirements go in the Note section on a task
and any additional discussion
revolving around the task
goes into the discussion area below.
We're also leveraging markdown
anywhere we can to increase the readability.
We'll use our Slack integration for this first example.
In this task, we're adding the ability
to list your active projects
regardless of where you are in Slack.
When it comes to requirements,
I like to cover what is happening,
then drill into how.
As you can see here, we wanna allow the user
to type in a command and list their projects.
We also want them to be able to add a search term
and narrow the project list.
Once we've established what is going to happen,
we'll talk about how we get there.
In this case, we want the user to enter the command
/tg projects
with an optional search term.
We want this response to be private
so that only the user making the request
sees the response.
We wanna make sure only active projects are returned.
If a project is starred,
we wanna make sure it's indicted.
And finally, we cover how to make the request.
As for bugs, we handle them a little bit differently.
Here's an issue Aaron reported from a while back.
Within our bug's project, he created a task
called +Not Working when project is open.
Within the Notes field,
the steps to reproduce the issue were added
along with the expected and actual results.
Aaron also provided a screenshot
with additional information.
It's always helpful when you can get a screenshot
or screen capture with your bug tickets.
In this specific case, our steps to reproduce
are very simple.
Open any project, ensure the sidebar is expanded,
and click the plus button next
to the active projects setting.
We're expected to be taking to the Create Project screen.
However, as you can see, nothing actually happened.
We were quick to jump on this
and had to fix out a few hours later.
Once it was live, we used a discussion area
and let Aaron know.
And that's pretty much it.
Managing your technical requirements
doesn't have to be hard.
Like most people, we found it best to write things down
into small chunks, but without overdoing it.
I hope this helps you
as you take your projects from an idea to a success.
- So, while using TeamGantt is a great solution,
as with anything else, there are many ways
to track requirements.
I tend to like to use ticketing systems
during the QA process so I can track those requirements
and work being done against them
through an acceptance and then eventually launch.
The process around that would generally be
that I would initiate a ticket
that would keep past down the line
during the project process,
and it would end with QA to test.
If QA finds an issue, they record it
and assign the ticket back to me.
If they don't, they mark it as complete
and assign it back to me.
As the lead, I close the tickets to ensure completeness.
I've also used spreadsheets to track to completion,
and essentially would move a row to another tab
or just color code requirements when they're complete.
You can handle this anyway you like, really.
The point is just that you have to track
what is complete before you release your product.
In fact, there are plenty ways of handling requirements.
We asked our PM experts for some tips
on documenting requirements.
Let's hear what they had to say.
- Documentation is crazy important.
We live by the rule, and my team is
if we haven't documented it, it doesn't exist.
And so, I think documentation is very crucial for teams.
I don't think we have to document every single
little thing we do,
but I think meetings notes are key,
open questions to the group are always key to document,
and then obviously some of the larger things,
like timelines, artifacts,
things that we're doing.
I'm not necessarily set on any one tool.
But as long as there is one that everyone uses
and understands, so there's a shared place,
a common place for everyone to go to
to be able to see and dig
and find any bit of information they maybe missing
as they go through the projects,
I think that helps the project just run so much smoother
as opposed to having to send out another email,
Slack another person and trying to figure out
where that one document is
or that one screen is or that one meeting summary is.
If we have it in that one kind of shared common place,
then I find it makes the process so much easier.
And our teams feel more well-equipped.
They can go into their meetings feeling confident
if they have all the information that they needed.
- I think the first thing we think about
when it comes to gathering requirements is
like the tools or the techniques we use.
I really don't think that matters at all,
what those are.
I think the most important thing is that
you're doing it in a sort of open environment,
you're doing it in conjunction with the client
or your stakeholders.
And that's a collaborative thing.
You're doing it together.
And that is not just something that happens
at the beginning of a project,
but rather, something that lives throughout
the course of the project.
If it has to change, you change it openly with your client.
And you make those as you through the project.
- Again, I think thinking about
the audience that you're communicating
those requirements to,
so the way that a developer needs to
internalize and understand requirements
may be different than the way your client needs
to internalize and understand those requirements.
So really thinking about what are the ways
in which you are creating
a shared understanding of something
but also being aware of the different needs of the audience
is that you're trying to serve with those requirements.
I think often, we write requirements
in a way that make sense to us
and our clients don't clearly understand them.
And then that means they don't really understand
what it is that they're buying.
So really making sure that you're tailoring
what your communicating so that everybody agrees.
Yep, this is what we're building.
This is how we know we're successful.
- I think it's really helpful to actually
sit down and workshop it.
So don't just talk about what you have to do
and then write it down
but work through it together.
Use that time to visualize what you're trying to make,
try to use that to maybe develop early flows or ideas.
You can start tracking like, again,
the pieces that you might miss.
Sometimes you can do that by working backwards
from a launch idea.
So if you're gonna launch a version
or iteration of a product,
think about what needs to happen in reverse
and you can actually come up with some interesting
new ways of solving it.
I also would recommend
that teams use 90th percent confidence
when they are setting up their requirements.
So what that means is that we would sit down
and try to find out what like the minimums
to the maximums in terms of complexity and effort would be
and that will help us actually frame the project
in a way we're really comfortable with
what we're creating in terms of outputs.
- I'm a real fan of writing down direct quotes,
because sometimes, they're able to capture
what somebody means
without trying to wrap it up
in some kind of technical jargon.
Another tip I have is to document everything
and take care of future you.
That's something I learned from a friend of mine,
Katy, back in the UK.
Taking care of future you
means writing things down and not relying on,
oh yeah, we'll remember what we meant by that.
That's fine.
You probably won't.
Just write it down, and that's my tips
for documenting requirements.
- When documenting project requirements,
make sure you're constantly asking the question why,
how, where, when.
Asking those questions will ensure
that you know exactly what needs
to go into the requirements.
When you're also putting together requirements,
make sure that you're covering all different avenues
that are important.
It's not just understanding the technical side
of how things need to go,
but it's also understanding the business rules
and requirements around that
and understanding how it's going to impact the end user.
Also getting in feedback from your QA team
and making sure that they validated how you can go through
and do acceptance criteria
and tracking all that information is extremely important.
We use different tools in order to make sure
everything is documented so that you have clear access
for everyone that's a part of your team,
whether you're all working in the same office
or you're working remotely.
Making your documentation easy access for everyone
where they also have the ability to continue to edit
as requirements change,
make sure that you're not missing anything.
- That brings us to the end of the class.
I hope it inspires you to take a look
at the downloads and think about
your own requirements practice and process.
There's more than one way of doing this,
and it's up to you to find the right way.
So come back for class five,
which will be all about project planning.
(lively music)
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RCA - "SelectaVision Video Monitor" (Commercial - 1983) - Duration: 0:33.
For more infomation >> RCA - "SelectaVision Video Monitor" (Commercial - 1983) - Duration: 0:33. -------------------------------------------
Project Estimation & Budgeting | Video Course | TeamGantt - Duration: 38:46.
(upbeat music)
- Hi and welcome back to The Art
and Science of Leading Projects.
I have a question for you, how long is it
going to take this painter to finish this job?
And how much do you think it will cost?
Hmm, not so easy to answer, huh,
probably because you have a lot
of questions and that's a good thing.
You should never just throw numbers
out there, unless you're on a game show.
And when you're working on projects,
you're gonna want to take a more measured
approach to creating estimates.
Lucky you, that's what this class is all about.
So, let's dig in.
(drumbeat)
So, what is estimation?
First, I want you to know that I understand
estimating projects is not easy for a number of reasons.
Teams and talent differ on projects,
our approaches to projects change,
sometimes we're not given enough info
to create good estimates, the list can go on.
But before you say forget it, you have to understand
what an estimate is and why you should do them.
A big reason it's not easy is because by definition
an estimate is an approximate calculation
or judgment of a value, number,
quantity or extent of something.
It's just a rough guess, but for some reason
people tend to think estimates are carved in stone.
They never should be, they're not exact.
They're guesses for what it could take
to get something done.
That often makes people ask the question,
if our estimates are never exact, then why bother,
and I get that, but there are a lot of good reasons
to create estimates, even for those people
who just want to start working or just don't
value the idea of an estimate.
The thing is, if you do not value estimates,
you probably don't try to create them accurately.
And if you're a project lead, you might need
some powerful and specific reasons to create estimates.
Here are just a few.
The first question a solid estimate can
answer is, is the project worth it.
Estimates help calculate a rough determination
of cost which can help decide whether or not
the project is worth the investment.
So, whether you're on a client side
or an internal team, you want to know
if the effort or cost matches the potential outcome.
For instance, I'm not going to build
an app for my company if it costs a lot of money
and I won't see a solid return on that investment.
The next question an estimate can help answer is,
do we have the staff to complete this project.
A good estimate will be based on specific tasks
and the talent used to complete them.
So, estimating with staff or even talents required
in mind will help you to staff the project properly.
Honestly, just exploring what something might be
can help you determine if you have the right people
on staff or if those people are even available
and if you really need to do the project,
it'll make you find those people
before you urgently need them.
If you're lucky, they'll help you
to estimate their time as well.
And then there's the question, how much time do we have.
You'll probably be wondering about the time
needed to complete a project, especially if you're taking
on something that you've never done before.
So, asking the simple question,
can we get a sense for how much time
this will take, is going to help you.
You always want a sense for how long
something will take to complete so you can
set the right expectations about deadlines.
But it's also important to consider
that more complex projects can be dependent
on other projects or tasks.
Knowing just how long it will take to complete
your project might answer an important question
about another project and when it may have
to start or finish.
Better yet, if you want to build something
for an in-person event or an announcement,
will you have enough time to get that done?
If not, you might have to think of alternative
approaches or ideas, but when you create
solid time estimates, which we'll cover in this class,
you can make some pretty direct assumptions
about overall timing, and that's powerful.
The last question is one that not all teams
have the luxury of asking, but it can be
important to team morale and even productivity,
and the question is, are we excited about the project?
You've gotta have your team's investment
in the project in order for it to be a success.
Because working with a team can often be
a challenge, particularly when no one has agreement
on working on a project, working together to produce
an estimate can be a great way to pull
the team together to ask about staffing,
responsibilities, process and even timing.
It might also be a good time to do a gut check
about how interested everyone is in approaching it.
So, those are some simple questions you can
answer by creating an estimate and even help you
to make the case for why you should create estimates.
But the questions won't end there.
When you get into estimating, you'll ask
some project specific questions that will help
you to shape your estimate and project scope,
but first, you want to gain a high level
understanding of these things.
Your industry, trends, changes and innovation.
It's important for project leaders to have
a current and ongoing view of what's happening
in their respective industries because our projects
often come to us as a result of a trend or a change.
Projects are also sometimes an opportunity
to try something new, so, making yourself
aware of innovation or big changes
on the horizon will help you to understand
possibly what's ahead of you in a new project.
That might not always help you
with an actual estimate, but it'll give you
an opportunity to ask even more questions
and figure out what might be coming to you.
An example of this for me was back
in 2009 when responsive design
became the next best thing in web design.
We had to figure out how to estimate for it.
That caused a lot of questions and changes
to the way presented work, gained approvals
and even the way we talked about what we did.
And that certainly affected our project estimates
because we put more time in the process.
Later that changed because we found efficiencies,
but having the opportunity to explore
the process and create estimates with the team
was so helpful because if we had not done that,
we would have lost a ton of money.
Next is your team and their capabilities.
You cannot forget to consider your team.
After all, you're collective team will
make the work on the project happen
and because not everyone works
on the same level, you'll want to consider that.
On some level, you should have an understanding
of what your team members are capable of doing
and even where they might need some help.
It's all about understanding capabilities
and expertise because when you know that,
you'll be able to create more solid estimates
based on who might be assigned to the project.
Next is process, process will play
a pretty big role in how you create estimates.
Chances are you have some general guidelines
for how your team handles process.
If you don't, check out class number two,
and tighten your process so you can consider
how you'll do things when you're estimating.
I also just want to note that process can evolve,
especially if you're using a hybrid method.
So do everything you can to be consistent
about conducting and documenting retrospective meetings.
That way you can continue to learn about
what's working and what isn't and create
fair estimates to improve upon those things.
And be sure to check in on projects,
and understand the complexities of what you
do well, and what you struggle with.
If you keep a log of work you've done
and your experiences, or better yet, retrospectives
and notes, or even time logs, you'll find a lot
of detail to help you get better estimates.
And that leads me to my last point here,
history on similar projects.
When you're estimating a project,
and you're just not sure how long
something should take, look back
at similar projects to see how they were handled.
That could include looking at plans
for timing or even hours logged in a time
tracking system to find actual time spent.
Just knowing how something worked
in the past will help provide context
for how you might approach a new project.
It might not be apples to apples,
but it'll help you to ballpark an estimate.
So those are things you should keep in mind
when estimating every project, but there are
some more specific questions you can
and should ask when estimating a new project.
At this point, it's all about drawing out
the important details on a project
so you can think critically about what the project
will be and how you'll actually shape it.
You want to ask a wide range of questions
on topics from goals to budgets, requirements and more.
Grab the estimating questions download,
and work them into your own estimating process.
It'll help you to start an important dialogue
about project details before you actually start
working on a project, and that will
help you to create more accurate estimates.
If you come up with additional questions,
mention them in the comments below.
And I want to make one more point
before we move on to tactics.
While you might know the answers to all
of the questions I mentioned earlier,
it's a good practice to keep them in your back pocket.
Just simply asking some smart questions
shows that you're taking a considered approach
to creating an estimate, and that shows
that you care about how your projects work.
Optics are pretty big in project leadership,
mostly because no one can actually see good leadership.
So make it a point to speak up and share info
or ask questions when you can.
It'll make you look really good,
and it'll also make people trust you,
and you'll need that trust when you get
to the inevitable tricky project situation.
(drumbeat)
Okay, let's jump into some estimating tactics,
but before I share the tactics, I want to mention
that it's not just about the project leader
sitting at his or her desk coming up
with numbers based on what they know.
Working in a vacuum like that will
likely be counter-productive, especially if there
are parts to the project you're just not truly sure about.
I know that when it comes to web projects,
I know enough to make me dangerous.
And that means I don't know enough about code
to sit down and create an estimate for a developer,
and that's fair because I'm not a developer.
So, I prefer to make estimation
a collaborative team process, that way I get
the input of the people who'll be working
on the project, or the people who can
represent them and their tasks.
I've found that estimating in teams brings up
more and sometimes better questions, and new approaches,
quality discussion on process and collaboration
and ultimately more accurate estimates.
So, if you can work with a team to estimate, try it.
If not, use the questions I've shared
to dig deeper on the info you need and use
the tactics I'm about to present to create
your own estimates, but maybe get a second person
to do a gut check on what you come up with.
Okay, so first you should talk about the project
with your team before you start throwing out numbers.
Yes, that means more discussion and it'll build
on the things you've asked stakeholders.
It's necessary.
If you're thinking you're spending too much time
about the estimate, then scale it back.
But if you want to be really thorough,
talk about these things with your estimating team.
First, dissect the project goal, issue or feature.
This is an important question to agree
on as a team and you'll notice
that I've added issue or feature here.
That's because you can use these
estimating tactics when a new idea, requirement,
or even a bit of scope is added to your project.
Sometimes requests come in small bites
and you have to address them as one-offs.
No matter what, you want to make sure you truly understand
what it is you're actually designing or building.
Also, understand the intent, what should it do and why.
If you have requirements, great.
If you don't, start thinking about what
they might be and discuss them with your team
and your stakeholders so you can get pretty clear
about what will be included in your scope and your estimate.
Essentially, you have to get granular
on the what and why so you can figure out the how.
Next, discuss goals; every project has a goal.
If you identify it early on, you can use it
as your way-finding tool to not only help formulate
your scope, but to avoid the inevitable scope creep,
then discuss timelines and resources needed.
A project deadline can create immediate constraints
on process, deliverables and sometimes even budgets.
So make sure everyone is aware of that constraint.
If you keep your team's availability
and experience and expertise level in mind,
and look at that through the lens of a budget,
you'll be able to decide who is best-suited for the project.
Finally, consider stakeholders and partners.
You always have to consider who you're working with.
As a project manager, I can tell you that not
all clients or stakeholders are created equally.
Some folks get it and are easy to work with,
others need more attention.
Diagnosing that early can tell me how much time
I'll need to spend with them, and that will
definitely impact my estimate.
But also think about how large your stakeholder team is.
Will they require a lot of education and meetings?
Do they work with other partners
who will have a role in the project?
That's going to take time too.
It's easy to only estimate the tasks,
but remember to consider the amount of time
you spend in meetings, in slack, in email,
in TeamGantt, on the phone or any other
mode of communication you use.
So, those are all good discussions points.
You might ask, what is the best way
to have those discussions.
I always recommend that teams estimate together
and discuss how and why they're coming up with estimates.
Simply talking about the variables that contribute
to how you're thinking about an estimate
will spark ideas about process, pricing,
collaboration, deliverables, and so much more.
So if you work with a team, and get
into a room to talk it out, you should.
Okay, now that you're armed with the info
you need to make some real decisions based
on actual facts, you're ready to create
the most realistic estimate possible.
I've got this traditional project management
method in my toolkit and I use it all the time,
not only at work, but with home projects as well.
A work breakdown structure is a method
by which you can visually represent
the composition of project by breaking
down all project stages and aspects
into their smallest possible components.
So essentially, this method makes you think
critically about all of the tasks
and subtasks that make up your project.
Here's an example of a traditional work breakdown structure.
As you can tell, it's for a birthday party.
You know, project management seeps into our daily lives.
Just think about all of the projects
you take on in your life, everything
from planning dinners, vacation,
home projects, the list is never-ending.
And you can use the fundamentals
of what you learn in this class to help
manage your own personal projects as well.
So, this work breakdown structure shows
the project broken into four groups of tasks,
guests, location, caterer, and decorations.
Within each there are subtasks to explain
all of the work that needs to be done for each.
Your work breakdown for a similar project
or event might not be the same as this one,
and that's okay; we all work differently.
And that's why listing out steps can be
really valuable to talk about process,
timing and of course, estimates.
You'll also notice that there are no estimates
related to the tasks in this work breakdown
structure, and we want more info than that.
That's why I've adapted it a bit.
So, to me, because I have a background in web design,
this format kinda looks like a sitemap.
That makes it somewhat confusing to read,
and because it's missing the actual estimate
in numbers, it requires a little bit more work.
So I've extended the work breakdown structure
a bit, and I like lists, so my format's
a little different, but easier for me
and my teams to read and edit.
Here's a work breakdown structure
I created for my own personal projects.
Well, this is a design version of what I created
which was actually scribbled on a piece of paper
you'd probably never be able to read on screen.
I moved recently and wanted to get a sense
for how long it might take and how much time
my wife and I would need to devote to the project.
I have to say this was an estimate,
and not even close to reality, but that's okay
because estimates are guesses, and I learned
from it, and I'll do better next time we move.
Check out how I broke it down.
First, I listed the high level groups
as tasks, searching for a new home,
buying a new home, and moving.
Under each group, I've added tasks as well as
possible durations for each with a total of days needed.
Side note here, when estimating projects,
you can use any time value you'd like.
I tend to use hours on work-related projects
and days for home projects.
To me, estimating hours is more difficult,
but it will get you a more accurate
and specific estimate that you can benchmark,
especially if you're tracking time against tasks.
One place where I screwed up with this was in moving.
I have pack boxes at five days,
and in reality it took us about seven days.
And then move was a huge miss as well,
because while we took two days to do that,
it took about a month to truly settle in and know
where everything was, but again, that's okay.
I was ahead of the game just having a general estimate here.
What it comes down to is that you have
to break every larger task down into subtasks
to truly understand the level of effort,
and sometimes it's really helpful to get
really granular by breaking a task into subtasks.
For instance, if I'm writing an article,
I break that work down into smaller tasks,
like outlining, drafting content,
thinking about and requesting or creating images,
editing, delivering for review,
gathering feedback, editing and revisions,
proofreading, formatting and presenting.
Getting at that level of detail just makes
it easier to translate things that might seem
big and unmanageable into small,
manageable and sizeable tasks.
You should try it on your own.
Download the work breakdown structure homework
download and create your own estimate.
Feel free to post an image of your work
breakdown structure in the comments,
and I might check it out and reply.
So you may be thinking a work breakdown structure
is great, but I need an easy way of calculating
a project estimate in conjunction with an actual plan
and resources, how can I do that.
TeamGantt can definitely help you,
and I'll show you how now.
Okay, let's talk about estimating at TeamGantt.
So, first I'm gonna build out my plan in TeamGantt
to show all of the steps and tasks
that will be needed to complete the project.
As you can tell here, I'm starting with a pre-made plan.
If you want more guidance on how
to create plans, check out class number five,
or even some of the awesome resources
that we have on the TeamGantt website.
I do want to mention that you'll need to be
on an advanced plan in order to estimate by hours.
So you're gonna need to do that before you can do
anything that I'm showing you on this quick demo.
Then, you want to be sure that you've added your team
to the plan, so let me show you how you can do that.
So, you can use, it's a couple ways that you can do this.
You can invite people here, or you can
go over to the people tab.
I'm gonna show you how to invite people
through this functionality right here.
So, it's gonna bring me over to essentially
the same place where it's gonna show me
who's already a part of my project.
So as you can see, I've already added
Jason, Mara and Tim to the project.
They're all people who are on my team who have accounts.
I can also invite people by email.
I can add people just based on showing who is
in the account already, or I can add a new person here.
Right, okay, so I already had everyone in the plan.
So we are ready to go.
I'm gonna pop back over to the Gantt view.
Alright, so, let's see, back to where we need to be.
I've got all of my tasks in.
I want to go in and add estimated hours,
but before I do that, I want to check
my project to make sure the settings are
set up to actually have hours enabled.
So I'm gonna go into menu, and then I'm gonna
go to project settings; in project settings
you can see that there are a bunch of settings here.
The one that I'm focused on for this demo is enabled hours.
So I want to make sure that that's set to yes
so that I can actually add hours to this.
So, it's set to yes, and we are all set.
Alright, so, what am I gonna do?
I've got all of my tasks in, I've got all of my people in.
I'm basically ready to go in and add my estimates.
So you might have your estimate on a spreadsheet
or some other paper that tells you how much time
you should be spending on things.
So basically what I'm gonna do is go
to the first task which is conduct stakeholder interviews,
and I'm gonna click on this little button here
to the right of the bar on the Gantt chart that says
assign task and on that I'm gonna add myself to that.
I'm gonna be the person who's doing that,
and you can see that it's showing three days
on the Gantt chart, and I know that it was
hours estimated for this was 15.
So I'm gonna say I have about five hours
per day to get this task done.
You can see I accidentally just clicked
on Jason, I'm just gonna check him off,
but if I do click on him again,
I'm able to add his hours there.
So all I have to do is click done.
I've got 15 hours set up for myself.
You can see it sets it up in the bar in the Gantt chart
at five hours per day, 15 hours total.
In my estimated hours column it's showing 15 hours.
Super simple to do that.
So what I would do is go through all of my tasks
and make sure that I am assigning the proper people
to do the work at the right amount of time,
and it's going to keep adding my hours to my estimate.
Estimated hours will keep tallying up
at the top of each section.
If I go in here and add some hours,
let's say we give Jason three hours here,
you can see it's gonna show 12 hours
because it's over four days, 12 hours added
to that estimate, and then also it adds
to the larger estimate at the top of the Gantt chart.
So, then when you're done, you can
even open this availability tab.
You can see I'm down here at the bottom right.
Open the availability tab to see the hours
that have been assigned to people across days.
This is gonna be really helpful if you want
to do some workload planning within TeamGantt,
which isn't really a part of our estimating project,
but I wanted to let you know that, oh sorry,
estimating class, but I wanted to let you know
that that is something that you can do.
It's pretty simple.
So, what I want you to do after the class is
to check out the homework assignments
for step-by-step instructions and actually do an exercise
to get yourself comfortable with estimating in TeamGantt.
Okay, let's get back to the class.
As you can tell, you could do your whole work
breakdown structure in TeamGantt, and then turn
it into a plan by adding dates and dependencies.
TeamGantt's a huge help when you want to create
an estimate for a project that you've gotta
plan for or even just to come up with a quick
hypothesis of what something could be.
Remember, starting a discussion
about a project with a team and stakeholders
will likely yield a better result
than just finalizing an approach on your own.
So make sure you share that plan
with your team and make updates as needed.
But what about those times when there's
just an idea for a project and you don't have a plan?
Download the estimating Excel spreadsheet
to help you list your groups and tasks
along with your team members and to assign
total time and even a cost to a project.
You can edit the doc to fit your needs,
adjust the formulas and find a quick way
to create estimates on a large project
without skipping over major tasks or deliverables.
I've also used this in Google sheets
and it works really well when you're
collaborating with a team on an estimate.
On that note, you might want to think through
a good process for estimating projects with teams.
Here's what I've found to work.
First, collect all background info on the project request
and share it with the team who are gonna
help you to create the estimate.
This could include an intake form, a request
for a proposal, an email or a list of requirements.
Just share it all because context is key
when you're creating estimates.
Be sure to share this info far in advance
of your estimating session so people have
time to think about it and read through documents.
Next, conduct your meeting, sit down
to talk through all the questions your team has.
If there are a lot of open items,
you'll probably want to get back
to your stakeholders and get some answers before proceeding.
If you're ready to go, crack open
your TeamGantt plan or your estimating sheet.
Talk through process at a high level
and make sure you're in agreement
and make adjustments together as needed.
Next, talk through the steps one-by-one,
and make sure the person responsible
for that step is considering the level of effort required.
Make sure you list your assumptions and document
the scope one each task as needed
in case you have to write a scope document
that correlates to your estimate.
Finalize your estimate, and check out
the durations or cost to verify that it
meets the constraints of the project.
Sometimes you'll end up out of range and have
to go back and adjust your scope or estimates.
Other times, you'll be dead-on and feel
really confident, but practice makes perfect,
especially when you're working as a team.
So keep at it, and work out a process that works for you.
When you formalize the process around
how you estimate, you'll actually find
that your estimates will become closer
and closer to your targets over time.
That means you'll be less stressed,
and far more profitable, and that's a good thing.
(intense drumbeats and rhythmic clapping)
Okay, those are the tips I have
around creating project estimates.
I just want to mention that the process I outlined works
really well for Waterfall and hybrid projects.
Estimation in Agile projects is similar,
but also just done in a different way.
It's most important to remember that you have
to set expectations around how you will work
with the Agile environments in order
for your projects to be estimated properly.
There are a couple of rules to consider.
First, if you're truly Agile, your team should
work on one project alone, and nothing else.
If they're not, then you're going to have
a hard time estimating their time.
It's going to become more of a hybrid project.
Next, in Agile all work is done in time-boxed sprints.
That means you're gonna estimate your time
based on the people working on the project
over a specific number of sprints.
It's essentially timeboxing, in other words,
to create an estimate in Agile, you're
basically asking how much does it cost
for our whole dedicated team to work
on only one project for a month,
but it's still really easy to mess up.
You have to consider what roles do you need,
how much time is considered full-time.
Think about company meetings, management tasks
and so on, will your team be truly dedicated,
will there be holidays or time off.
There are a lot of questions to answer,
and expectations to set, but once you've
sorted it all out and set the expectation
of the dedicated team and sprints needed,
you can do some really simple math.
So let's look at this example.
I never talk about rates because they vary
from location to location, company to company
and even person to person, and some companies
don't even charge back rates internally,
so chances are this part doesn't matter to you.
Anyway, we're using a simple round
number to create this estimate.
So, let's say it costs your company $10,000
to dedicate one person to a project
for four weeks and your team does two week sprints.
That would mean that for one person
to complete a sprint, it will cost $5,000.
So, what if your project is six months
long, then you'll need 12 sprints.
And let's say your project will require
four team members over those 12 sprints.
The simple math here would be four resources
times $5,000 per sprint.
That comes to $20,000, but then we multiply
that by 12 sprints and get a total project cost of $240,000.
It seems too easy, right?
Just remember, it will never be perfect.
People will call out, stakeholders will delay.
You'll encounter issues.
There's no doubt this is how all projects work,
but the ease of this process allows you
to truly control scope and process at the same time.
Any time a new change comes in, you can talk
about adding sprints to complete work
rather than incremental fees you have to estimate.
And your flat cost is easy to calculate.
In fact, we did it in the example and the cost
of a sprint was $20,000, simple and pretty pricey.
Okay, so that's estimating at the project level,
and again, even that's problematic because Agile projects
aren't supposed to have a specific ending.
Of course, they end, but until you get
into the process, you don't know
how many sprints you'll actually need.
So again, it will always be just an estimate.
Check out the estimating Agile project homework
download and try this out for yourself
using your own project variables.
(loud drumbeats)
I also want to talk about estimating
at the task level with Agile.
The idea with Agile is that you take
an iterative approach to how the work is done,
but you break the project into smaller pieces
or stories and work on them to shift
functionality independently and the way
you determine what can be done
in a sprint is done through estimation.
It all starts with user stories.
A user story is a tool used in the Agile methodology
to capture a description of a project feature
from an end user's perspective.
The user story describes the type
of user, what they want and why.
A user story helps to create a simplified description
of a requirement and can help to lead you
to a very distinct estimate for the design
and build of that requirement.
Most teams elect to write all stories using this structure.
It helps to cover all of the bases and stay consistent.
The most basic way to estimate a task
is in what we know as humans.
Hours, days, weeks and months.
The Agile methodology erases your memory
of any estimates created with increments of time.
It requires of thinking about estimates,
and that's story points.
This is a number that tells the team
how difficult the user story is
due to complexity, unknowns and effort.
Teams use different scales to determine story points.
Because story points represent the effort
to develop a story, a team's estimate must include
everything that can effect the effort.
That could include the amount of work to do,
the complexity of the work, and any risk
or uncertainty in doing the work.
When estimating with story points,
be sure to consider each of these factors.
What we're looking at here is the Fibonacci sequence
to estimate effort.
Many teams use the sequence as the basis
for producing story points, so, as a story's
being estimated, team members select a number
in the sequence that they believe
represents the level of effort.
The most confusing part of using story
points is determining what the numbers
actually mean in relation to effort.
For instance, how do you know that a three
means the same thing to the whole team.
Well, the best way to determine this with a first time team
is to sit down and define them.
Some teams use planning poker to score stories.
It's a fun, collaborative way to share
ideas on estimates and come up with a final
determination of a story estimate.
T-shirt sizing is another way to sort tasks.
It's high-level but also relatable
and a simple way to convey the size
of something without relying on more detail.
As you can tell, there are several ways to do this.
You can order a planning deck, make your own,
or select values that are more relatable to your team.
For instance, I saw a cool example
that showed London's buildings from size small
to large that a team uses to help estimate tasks.
So you can get creative with your scoring,
just keep in mind that story points pull emotion
out of the estimates by not talking about time.
They focus on task and the size of the task,
not the time you take to get it done.
The minute you start talking about time,
people tend to bring in outlying factors
like time off, working time and other personal things.
Story points allow us to focus back
on the task and only the task.
(drumbeats)
At the end of the day, whether you're Agile
or Waterfall or a little bit of both,
like many of us, you have to come up with a way
of estimating that will work for you.
Follow the rules or break them, that sure
doesn't matter because what really matters
is that you learn about how you do your best work
and get better at estimating over time.
Just so you know, it's never easy.
On that note, we asked some project management experts
what's the most difficult thing about estimating projects.
Let's hear what they have to say.
- I think the trickiest thing about estimating
is not so much the math, but I think
we kind of have a pretty good idea of how
to break things down and come up
with some numbers that make some sense.
I think the trickiest thing is communicating
to people, whether it's your project sponsor
or your boss or the client, communicating
that it's an estimate, it's really a guess,
and not something that they should be writing
in stone somewhere and committing people to.
There's the cone of uncertainty that says,
the further something is out, the less we can
be sure what it is, and we need to communicate
that to people so that we set the right expectations
about what an estimate is and what a quote is
and distinguishing some of those things.
- Well, estimating's one of those things
that quite often it's a finger in the air.
Sometimes you use historical information.
Sometimes we'll gather people together
and ask them what they think, how long
do they think that it will take.
And I often think that the hardest thing
about estimating projects is finding
the right people because people are
so busy these days and they'll go
out of their way to tell you how busy they are.
But once you've gathered the right people,
what you've gotta do is to make sure
you're not trying to be perfect first time.
People spend too long trying to get the absolute
perfect date and it just doesn't work like that.
What you've gotta do is say, at this point
in time, how long do we think that it will take,
who do we think that we will need,
and then you can work out a bit of a cost.
And it's the same whether you're doing Waterfall
or Agile, it's exactly the same.
You only know enough at that point in time.
So, for me, making sure you've got the right
people in the room is key, and then making
sure as you iterate you continue to reevaluate
who are the right people to get in the room,
'cause if you simply use the same people
over and over again, you're closed off to other viewpoints.
Always look for the history.
Always get the right people in the room,
consequently you get a better job at estimating.
- Stop trying to make estimates into exactimates.
They're guesses, they're bad.
They're made with imperfect information
and the problem is that once we make them,
it's sets an expectation and people expect
that we're gonna be good at it,
but if we knew how long it was gonna take,
we wouldn't be estimating, right?
So, it's important to keep for yourself,
for the people on your time, I always encourage
them to track their accuracy with the estimates
so that they can get better, and find ways
to get better at figuring out what things
did I miss last time, how can I not do it next time.
But the biggest challenge I see with estimating
is that people think that that's what's gonna
happen and so, you've got to constantly reset
expectations with the stakeholders and help them
understand that an estimate is just a guess,
and we didn't have the right information to make it.
So, these things are gonna change.
Obviously, you're gonna have to protect yourself
if you're doing budgeting and things like that.
So you might want to leave a little bit
of a buffer there, but giving team members
the freedom to estimate their own work is
really important, and making sure they understand
that we know these estimates are gonna change.
We know they're not gonna be right.
We know there's constantly gonna be flux here.
So, that expectation with the team members
and with the stakeholders is really important.
- What's the hardest thing about estimating projects?
I think it's optimism.
So often our teams and our management want
to think that they can get a task done quicker
than actually ends up being the case.
In order to solve for this, we can break down
all of the parts that might need to be done.
We can remind our team that planning,
conversations, testing, QA, revisions,
all of that needs to be a part
of the task and included in the estimate.
We should also make sure that our team
is talking about their confidence level
in the estimate that they're giving us,
and challenge them when they give us their numbers.
And getting a second opinion is also important
so that we're not just taking the word of one person.
And they're having a conversation
where we're going back and forth
and confirming the estimate that was given.
- Estimating projects is like black magic.
It's inaccurate every time, so I think
the hardest part about estimating is
that people are bad at estimating,
and yet it's a necessity of our industry,
and so we're constantly in this cycle
of trying to get better at a thing that is,
we're just naturally not very good at.
So, what's hard about estimating projects is that it's hard.
- The hardest thing about estimating projects
is that it's just an estimate.
A lot of times when you're working with clients,
they expect you to be perfect in the way
that you are identifying how long or how much
money it's going to take to do something.
When you take a look at putting together
exactly what the requirements are going to be,
and if you have a lot of those details,
it can help make estimating a little bit easier.
One of the things that we do is we stop
looking at it from a number of hours
that it takes to do something, but really start
looking at it from a complexity perspective.
We try to break out tasks so that you
don't find yourself hopping between 15
different things in one given day.
Instead focus on do I think it's gonna take
me the entire day to complete this one item
because it's super hard or do I think I can
probably complete it in half a day.
From that way, you're looking at it
both from a complexity perspective,
but also giving your client the reassurance
of how long will it actually take to do this.
- Alright, that brings us to the end of the class.
I know that estimation is not easy,
but hopefully these tactics will help you
to tackle larger tasks and break them down.
If you do get stuck, ask questions of your team
or colleagues or even prospective clients
because they can usually offer more information.
Don't be nervous about being transparent
about what you don't know because that's gonna
help you when you actually work on the project.
You'll gain trust, you'll learn more,
and you'll deliver what the client needs within budget.
Also, dig deep, nothing is high-level
when you create estimates like this.
Get into the detail so you can understand
what factors are driving your estimates.
Look back on similar projects and see
what they were like and if they were on budget.
If you aren't tracking project histories
in the form of high level retrospective notes
or logged hours in a time tracking tool,
you should start now, and finally, remember
that no estimates are set in stone.
List your assumptions, discuss risks,
and work out an estimation process
that works for you and your team.
Don't forget to grab the class downloads.
Have some fun with the homework assignments.
Test out TeamGantt and get better at estimating.
Come back for class four which will be all about gathering
and documenting project requirements.
(upbeat music)
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