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In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

I’m in the midst of discussing a block of three processes that are in the continuous improvement knowledge area that are carried out in the planning phase.   The third of these processes is 7.4 Identify Metrics.   In the last post, I discussed the dashboard, sometimes known as a stoplight report.   In this post, I discuss three ways of showing progress on a project, the burn-up chart, the velocity chart, and the earned value management chart.  

A burn-up chart shows the work completed and is most commonly used for release plans.   A line shows progress across multiple iterations in a way that is easy for stakeholders to understand.   It is a cumulative chart, which shows how much work needs to be completed before the end of the release.

A velocity chart shows the work completed across multiple iterations, but unlike the burn-up chart, it is expressed in terms of the number of story points completed during iteration, also known as the velocity of the iteration.

Progress on a project can also be expressed by earned value management.   Like the burn-up chart, it shows cumulatively the number of stories completed during each iteration, but it also includes

• the Earned Value or EV of the stories completed, meaning how much the stories that were actually completed were supposed to cost, versus
• the Actual Cost or AC of the stories completed, meaning how much the stories that were completed actually cost.

These two values are plotted against the baseline of

• the Planned Value of each iteration, meaning how much the stories that were supposed to be completed cost.

In the next post, I will cover the other important set of metrics to be followed, namely, the risk metrics on a project.

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