SUMMARY

8.5 SUMMARY

It's important for project managers to plan for team and communication management and to prepare a comprehensive final project management plan document.

The following are the important takeaways from this chapter:

         Software project is a team effort. In managing the team, you must take into account the project goals as well as team members' goals.

         Have regular communication within the team and with the customer. Explicitly plan for escalation channels at both ends to resolve issues that are hard to resolve otherwise.

         Document the outcome of various planning tasks in a comprehensive plan. Have this document reviewed to identify potential planning defects and to exploit the experience of senior managers to improve it.

         The documented plan must contain information on the project, the process to be used, the change management method, the effort estimates, the milestones, the risk management plans, the quality plans, the project tracking and reporting plans, the escalation channels for resolving issues that go beyond the project, and the team organization.

With respect to the CMM, a documented project management plan is a requirement of the Project Planning and Project Tracking and Oversight KPAs of level 2. The approaches discussed in this chapter and the contents of the project management plan also satisfy many requirements of the Integrated Software Management and Intergroup Coordination KPAs at level 3, the two KPAs of level 4, and some aspects of the Training KPA at level 3.