An example of project management workflow

Here's an example of software project management worfklow that I use daily.

Each project is split into two uneven parts:

  • Definition of project scope and objectives
  • Project execution and follow-up.

The main difference is that the former is document-based while the later uses a bug issue tracker

For definition of project scope and objectives, we edit a series of documents:

  • Personas — a list of different kinds of people that may be using the product, e.g. readers, clients, journalists, etc
  • User stories — a description of how these personas would use the product
  • Functional requirements — a non-technical list of features induced from user stories
  • Technical requirements — a list of technical features, induced from functional requirements
  • Budget estimation — based on technical requirements and team skills.

There's also an optional Traceability matrix — a many-to-many mapping between functional requirements and technical requirements.

For project execution and follow-up, we use an issue tracker Assembla to define:

  • Milestones — e.g. "Freeze data structures"
  • Tickets — for individual tasks, such as "Update the logo"
  • Components — to group tickets by origin or subproduct, e.g. "Marketing & Sales requests", "Newsletters"
  • Time — estimate and invested time, related to a ticket or not.