The case description at the beginning of this chapter presented the situation of a new project leader, Mary Hendricks. Her company, Custom Apps Now, had just promoted her to be a project leader, which was an interim step to becoming a full-fledged project manager. The policies at Custom Apps Now were to give very broad management authority to their project managers. Being a project leader was the first step of a major promotion to project manager. Usually, a project leader worked closely with a project manager, who would coach and mentor the project leader through one or two projects before the final promotion. Mary’s previous project manager and mentor suggested she build a checklist of steps she would follow to accomplish the objectives in each of the nine PMBOK knowledge areas.

Custom Apps Now uses Agile techniques extensively in all its development projects. As such, every project was based on iterations with deliverables defined for each iteration. Project scope and project objectives were defined for the overall project, but detailed schedules were used only within each iteration. 

Assuming you have been promoted to project leader at Custom Apps Now, your assignment is to prepare your own checklist of processes and procedures to manage your project. Take each PMBOK area separately to create specific processes, procedures, and guidelines for that knowledge area. One good way to start is to review the specific objectives of each knowledge area and identify some procedures to accomplish that objective. Processes and procedures should be consistent with Agile techniques. 

For example, one objective of project scope control is to control the project scope so it doesn’t grow inappropriately (i.e., doesn’t suffer from scope creep). One project guideline might be to not allow new scope changes within an iteration. Across iterations, new functions or use cases may be added but with the requirement that any new use case must be approved by a user steering committee.