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Project Management Artifact Set >
Project Measurements
Artifact:
Project Measurements
Project Measurements
The project
measurements artifact is the project's active repository of metrics
data. It contains the most current project, resources, process, and
product measurements at the primitive and derived level.
The Word template can be bought through a template package. Case studies and reports are freely available in the table below.
Word Template
Case Study
Report
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Purpose
The Project Measurements artifact provides the storage for the project's
metrics data. It is kept current as measurements are made, or become, available.
It also contains the derived metrics that are calculated from the primitive data
and should also store information (procedures and algorithms, for example) about
how the derived metrics are obtained. Reports on the status of the project, for
example, progress towards goals (functionality, quality, and so on),
expenditures, and other resource consumption, are produced using the project
measurements. More frequent, or even apparently continuous, displays of project status are possible
using tools where automated software
data collection agents feed real-time displays of project status.
Brief Outline
The format and contents of the Project Measurements artifact depends on
the metrics selected and the technology used for collection and storage. It is
essentially a database of metric-value associations and allied information for
their collection and calculation. Its form could be as simple as a set of files
manually maintained by the Project Manager, but we recommend that the
collection and storage be automated and, as far as possible, be made
non-intrusive.
Timing
The Project Measurements artifact should be set up early in the Inception
phase, and then kept current, so that reported status does not significantly lag
behind the real status of the project. The actual frequency of updates will depend on
the particular metric and the technology chosen. For example, effort data is
often collected from a timesheet system, which typically presents data on a
weekly cycle and also feeds a payroll system. It is certainly possible to capture
effort data more frequently and separate its collection from the pay cycle,
although this may require additional procedures or systems, which an
organization may feel are not justified.
Responsibility
The Project Manager is responsible for
ensuring that the Project Measurements are properly set up and then routinely
updated. The Project Manager will use the Project Measurements throughout any iterations for
controlling and monitoring that iteration.
Tailoring
On smaller projects, project measurements may exist only as reports from the
defect tracking system and a spreadsheet to track progress. On larger or more
formal projects, there may be a large selection of metrics managed using one
or more databases., This may be a distributed artifact, for example, the various
metrics selected by the Project Manager may be produced by several different
tools, with the collection and reporting task being a manual one. Here's another
example: the project's progress may be reported from a project plan that is
routinely updated by the Project Manager from status information supplied in
spreadsheets by team members.