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Project Status Report (PSR)
Why
With the Project Status Report (PSR) Kabisa gives insight in the overall project progress, in order for the customer to be able to make well-informed decisions.
Prepare for success
- If a forecast towards a certain goal (release or epic) is important to the customer (and it usually is), make sure that all user stories for that goal are on the Product Backlog and estimated. Otherwise, plan a co-preparation session or extra time for backlog refinement.
- Collect the sprint numbers (hours and story points) as soon as possible, preferably before Sprint Review.
How
- Present the highlights of the PSR (sprint numbers and forecast) at the Sprint Review.
- Add any project issues (partly coming from the retrospective[1]) to the report.
- If the forecast goes outside the project boundaries, add an exception to the report, and immediately discuss with the customer how to deal with that exception.
- Deliver the report at the end of every sprint.
- Explain and discuss the details of the report with the customer.
Definition of Done[2]
- Hours, story points, forecast, project issues & exceptions reported.
- PSR sent and explained to customer (Product Owner[3] and sponsor) and Kabisa (account manager, operational manager, development team).
- Content of the PSR discussed with the customer
Real Life Example
A startup company came to Kabisa with a limited budget to develop an onboarding app. The development team consisted of one full stack developer, one part time front-end specialist and one “backup” developer for the code reviews. Even though we kept the team this small, budget was only sufficient for a bit over three sprints. By reporting the exact status of the budget at every sprint review, the customer (product owner and key stakeholders) were able to make the right decisions on what to build for the first release, and what not to build.
