AgileCCPM Project Execution and Monitoring, Changes, and Baselines

1. Transitioning Your Critical Chain Project to "In-Progress" Status

No matter how well you plan, changes are inevitable.

When your Critical Chain project is planned correctly—as outlined in the previous article—with Feeding Buffers protecting the Critical Chain and a Project Buffer safeguarding the end date, your plan has a significantly higher chance of meeting its deadline compared to traditional waterfall methods using Gantt Charts with Critical Path. This is even more robust than Agile approaches like Scrum or Kanban, which typically do not prioritize scope and delivery dates.

However, changes and Murphy's Law are unavoidable. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) equips you to quickly detect deviations from your plan and assess their severity by monitoring Fever Charts. These charts provide a clear view of chain progress, overall project health, and buffer consumption.

To start tracking and monitoring progress, change the project status from Draft to In-Progress.

Use the toolbar menu to transition your project from Draft to In-Progress:

2. Select Optional Data Update to Jira

You might see the follow opionts you can select when moving your project to In-Progress:

• Set Epic Start date and Due date to equal the Critical Chain (with Project Buffer) Start and End dates This option is displayed when the source of your project is an Epic.

• Set Start and Due Dates for all tasks to equal planned dates

  This might be helpful if you want your standard Jira Timeline View show schedule similar to Critical Chiain. You need your task/issue type to already be using this field in Jira to have the correct field association created. If you select this options but do not see dates added to your tasks, first set Start Date and Due Date manually in Jira for a task..

• Set Flag for the tasks on the Critical Chain

• Set Label for the tasks on the Critical Chain

  Flags and Labels will make it easier to see these tasks in Jira and help you better prioritize work when you use Scrum or Kanban.

• Move all tasks to the Sprints based on start dates

  If you chose Epic as teh source for your project and your board has any Sprints, we will show you the option to move your tasks to the appropriate sprints. This will not be possible if your Critical Chain Project Start date is in the past. Please also know that if you have any finished task that have already been marked as finished in some older sprints, Jira will not move them even if you schedule them to be in newer sprints.

When you click OK in the modal, the Schedule view switches from Planning mode to Execution mode:

3. How Task Progress is Calculated

Although we can track when an issue's status changes and calculate how long it spends between stages (e.g., "To Do" to "Done"), the accuracy of these calculations depends on the team’s input. From our experience, status changes often lag behind actual progress. For example, developers may start working on a task but forget to update its status until much later, such as during sprint planning.

Because of these inconsistencies, relying solely on the issue's Changelog can lead to inaccurate results. To address this, we use a different approach:

• By default, when a task is moved to Done, we assume it started and finished as planned.
• However, you can manually adjust the Actual Start Date for unfinished tasks and both the Actual Start Date and Actual End Date for completed tasks.

We also factor in holidays to automatically calculate the actual story points for completed tasks. If a task is overdue, its actual story points increase. Any delays or advances are carried forward to subsequent tasks, with buffers absorbing delays until their capacity is exhausted.

4. Visualizing Tasks That Deviate from the Plan

AgileCCPM visually distinguishes tasks based on whether they deviate from the plan:

• Tasks that start and finish as planned are displayed in blue:
• Tasks that start as planned but finish early show the early completion portion in green:
• Tasks with a late start and late finish show the delayed portion in pale red:
• Tasks with either a late start or late finish highlight the delayed portion in pale red:

5. Monitoring Progress with Fever Charts

Fever Charts are an important feature of Critical Chain Project Management, providing real-time insights into progress and buffer penetration for both feeding and critical chains.

• The point view gives a snapshot of the current state:
• The history view offers a more detailed perspective, showing how the project reached its current state:

Fever Charts categorize buffer consumption into three zones:

1. Green - Watch: Progress is on track; no action needed.
2. Yellow - Plan: Start planning corrective actions.
3. Red - Act: Immediate action is required to keep the project on track.

This early-warning system helps you identify and address issues long before they jeopardize your project.

6. Calculating Project Progress and Buffer Penetration

In Critical Chain Project Management, not all tasks contribute equally to the overall project duration. Only tasks on the Critical Chain impact the project's timeline.

• Project progress is calculated based on the percentage of Critical Chain tasks completed. Progress is only recorded when a task moves to Done.
• Buffer penetration is updated daily. Each working day consumes 1 story point (based on default settings where 1 story point = 8 hours = 1 working day). When a Critical Chain task is completed, its story points are added back to the buffer.

This system provides daily updates on project progress, buffer consumption, and overall health.

7. Managing Changes and Baselines

AgileCCPM strikes a balance between Agile methodologies, which embrace change, and traditional methods documented in PMBOK and practiced by PMI-certified professionals, which require formal change management processes.

Even with robust buffers, certain changes—such as scope adjustments, team member reassignments, or resource availability—can significantly impact your project schedule and delivery date.

AgileCCPM automatically detects such changes, whether they occur in the app or directly in Jira. When changes are detected, you’ll see a modal summarizing the updates and prompting you to either:

1. Create a New Baseline to preserve previous versions of your schedule, or
2. Update Existing Baseline to modify the original plan.

Saved baselines can be accessed from the toolbar for easy comparison:

8. Marking the Project as Complete

When your project is finished, change its status to Done. This action freezes the latest baseline, stops monitoring progress, and disables most editing functions.

Now lets explore the capabilities we offer for managing your Critical Chain Project Portfolio