Project Manager Role

The project manager is responsible for shepherding the inventory for a specific product or release through the system of code production. The Project Manager may also, from time-to-time, have to expedite requests. The new Project Manager role will look more like a manufacturer's expeditor role.

The Project Manager should maintain the Issue Log for the release and monitor the trend in open issues.

The Project Manager determines the Critical Chain and creates the CCR-leveled PERT chart for a specific release. She also controls the internal release of batches of inventory through the system. However, the Project Manager does not need to track individual line items. The tracking should be done at a coarse grained level to avoid creating too much work and too many unnecessary dependencies.

The Project Manager will negotiate the project and feeding buffers with the development manager and then monitor the buffer consumption and report any significant events to executive management. Significant events are those that impact the Critical Path or delivery date of the project.

Buffers are consumed because inventory is blocked and an issue is raised. Hence, the Project Manager must focus primarily on keeping the Issue Log empty and preventing issues from impacting the buffers and eventually the Critical Path.

The metrics a Project Manager should monitor and be measured by are the number of open issues, their trend and age, the number of units of inventory blocked, their trend and age of the blockages, and the project and feeding buffer consumption and current status. All of these should be grouped into a single project dashboard. The entire health of a project can be described with these simple metrics.