Minimum Viable Project Manager (MVPM) Tools

Minimalist tools to help software delivery teams achieve better outcomes with greater predictability and confidence.

Become a “Minimum Viable Project Manager” and remove (at least some of) the need for middle-manager intervention.

Use in conjunction with your Project Management suite of choice (Jira, Azure DevOps, Excel…). MVPM Tools requires minimal data-entry to provide potential high-value insight into project health.

Motivation

I worked as a software development consultant for 8 years. During that time, the consultancy I worked for enjoyed an overwhelming preponderance of successes. Meanwhile, we noted that many of our competitors, even other teams working within our clients’ organisations, often failed. Not only that, but they failed in painfully drawn-out and despairingly expensive ways.

Is it hard to deliver successful software projects? Maybe.

Is it hard to at least identify if software projects are on-track and heading towards success or failure? No. Not really, no. At least, it needn’t be.

MVPM Tools is the first step in my journey to share the lessons learned, skills honed, and best practices discovered and refined during my time as a lead consultant hell-bent on succeeding despite all odds. MVPM Tools will capture those practices and enable anyone to steer their teams towards success without incurring unsustainable management overhead and technology fatigue.

Key Features


Semi-intelligent Burn Up chart generation

Burn up charts show a team’s progress through a body of work on a per-iteration basis. With just a burn up, teams and stakeholders can better answer questions like:

The plan is to create a Burn Up tool that is agnostic of any project management software (i.e. Jira, Azure DevOps, Trello, even Notion…) and requires minimal overhead to produce a high-value picture of progress and trajectory every iteration.

Super simple Budget metrics

When money is a constraint, it’s important to measure the team’s movement towards the limit. Assign team roles and rates, plug in their commitment, and see if the budget will be enough.