One of the ways Mingle Plus supports adaptive planning is presenting realistic information about your plan’s actual progress. Using project data, Mingle Plus shows how much work has been completed and how much remains, as well as provides forecasts that indicate whether or not your plan is progressing as expected. This type of visibility helps you understand which teams may need support and when you might need to adapt your plan to accommodate change.
When projects necessary to fulfill an objective in your plan are running late, not yet started, or delayed, Mingle Plus provides alerts so you can proactively address the issue and continue advancing your plan towards delivering customer value. Because it ties alerts to specific projects, Mingle Plus avoids the problem of rolled-up data and helps you identify where change is occurring.
When do I see an alert?
Mingle Plus provides alerts when a project is running late or when a project hasn’t started and the objective it supports has been running for more than 10% of its planned duration. Drilling into the objective, you can see which projects haven’t started or are forecasted to be late.
How does Mingle Plus Determine a Project is Running Late?
Mingle Plus uses your total average velocity to forecast whether or not your project will be late in three scenarios: no scope change, 50% increase in scope, and 150% increase in scope. The alert is triggered if your project is forecasted to finish late with no change in scope. You can read more about this forecasting in our blog post about forecasting in Mingle Plus.
Proactively Respond to Progress
Mingle Plus helps you proactively respond to your plan’s actual progress by identifying the rate of progress and where it is (or is not) occurring.
If your project has started but is running late, you can view what work is finished and what work is not “done”. Because your projects are part of Mingle Plus, you can drill into specific cards to view their history and current status. You can see who last worked on the card and start a conversation with her, or reach out to the project manager to understand what can be done to help move the project forward.
And if a project in your objective has not yet started, you can access the project to see what’s on deck and speak with the project team about how best to initiate work towards achieving your objective.
We believe this type of visibility about your plan and projects facilitates collaboration, helping you understand how and when to adapt your plan and more efficiently deliver customer value.
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Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.