Key 11 - Status: Michigan Agile Philosophy (MAP) Project Key

11. Status

Married? Single? Parent? Citizen? What’s your status? We have lots of ways of using status in “real life.” When it comes to project status, it can be useful IF it is used to help make decisions…if not, it’s really just a waste of time.
As far as a project is concerned, what are we really looking for? Well, in most cases it is the health of the project. How are we doing? Are we learning some stuff that is going to change estimates? Have we figured out that we can deliver less features and still achieve the objective? How are we doing with respect to the budget? Has the project even started yet?
We have several touch points in the Michigan Agile Philosophy (MAP) that give us opportunities to share project status frequently. Consider stand-ups (scrums), Planning and Prioritization meetings, Show and Tells, and Retrospectives. Each of these give us an opportunity to share the health of the project from the macro level to the micro, story level.
Some statuses we use:

• Intake: The MSIS Project intake form has been submitted. This means that the request will be evaluated in MSIS Governance.
• Inception Deck: The Project has passed Intake and is either approved to begin or at least approved to find out more information. You can read more about the Inception deck in Key 10: What does done look like?
• In Progress: The Project is ongoing.
  • Sprint 0: We are in the initial phases of building a backlog and estimating the project.
  • On Track: According to our burn up charts, we are on track to meet the deadline with the existing feature set.
  • Behind Schedule: According to our burn up charts, it looks like we are not going to meet the deadline with the existing feature set.
• Blocked: There is a dependency or an issue that is keeping us from moving forward.
• On Hold: For some reason, maybe budget, compliance, security, personnel, or something else, the project is on hold.
• Terminated: We are no longer doing the project. It has been terminated. [to T-X] Terminator: You are terminated.
• Done: The project has been completed.

These above aren’t set in stone, they are merely a sampling of most of the statuses we hear. The point is that the PM and most likely the team should be able to explain the health and therefore the status of the project in a language that everyone can easily understand.