Contents
Outline
Many companies include project management as an evaluation criterion, but in practice, few team members actually get opportunities to manage projects. When only a select few handle project management, it becomes difficult to evaluate other members in that area.
In this post, we’ll introduce the PnP (Project in Project) concept and how to adopt it as a solution to this problem.
What is PnP
PnP stands for Project in Project. It’s a concept where you take tasks from an ongoing project and turn them into standalone sub-projects to manage independently.
- Main Project: The service-level project managed by the team. In Agile terms, this corresponds to the Theme level.
- PnP: A large task within the main project that can be spun off and managed as its own project. In Agile terms, this corresponds to the Epic level.
For example, if the main project is Service A, tasks that could be managed as PnP include:
- Introducing Google Analytics (data analysis, A/B testing)
- Introducing testing (unit tests, E2E tests)
- Applying Sentry (error and exception handling)
By leveraging PnP, you can create and run sub-projects within a main project.
Why Adopt PnP
The reason for adopting PnP is to align team members’ understanding and formalize it as part of the development process. Through PnP, more members can gain project management experience, and you can build a structure that reflects this in evaluations.
How to Implement
Once you’ve decided to adopt PnP, here’s how to proceed at both the team level and as a PnP lead.
Team Level
- List out projects that could be run as PnP.
- Select PnP projects from the list.
- Assign them to team members.
- Include PnP tasks during sprint planning.
PnP Lead
- Define the project goals.
- Project overview
- Project objectives
- Scope
- Decisions and considerations needed
- Schedule
- Share the goals with team members to align understanding.
- Break the project down into smaller pieces. In Agile, create User Story-level items.
- Create tickets in the backlog.
- During planning, categorize tickets into must-haves and nice-to-haves, then add them to sprints.
- Start development.
There’s no need to set up dedicated PnP standup meetings or regular check-ins — just incorporate it into the main project flow.
Things to Keep in Mind
- Members handling PnP still work on main project tickets.
- You need to manage the balance of workload and schedule between the main project and PnP tasks.
- Since PnP is meant for developing project management skills and evaluation purposes, be careful not to invest too much time in it.
- Essential features for the main project must be delivered, so prioritization is key. It’s important for the main project lead and PnP lead to stay aligned.
PnP Example
Here’s an example of a PnP for introducing testing (unit and E2E tests) to Service A.
- Project Overview
- Detect bugs in the service early and reduce the bug occurrence rate.
- Reduce regressions caused by additional development.
- Project Objectives
- Establish policies for unit tests and E2E tests.
- Write unit tests and E2E tests.
- Scope
- Write unit tests for components and functions with complex logic.
- Write E2E tests based on page-level test cases.
- Run test code in GitHub Actions.
- Decisions and Considerations
- When a bug or regression occurs, always write a test case before fixing it.
- Create E2E tests based on existing test cases.
- Identify and add tests for complex components and functions.
- Write test cases when developing features that are complex or have many conditions.
- If code requires comments, write test cases for that section.
- Schedule
- 26 pages over 6 months (24 weeks) = 1 sprint: 2-3 pages
- Write test code whenever a bug or regression occurs
- Complex components or functions: 1-2 per sprint
Expected Benefits
Adopting PnP brings several benefits:
- More team members can learn project management skills through PnP.
- It becomes easier to evaluate members’ project management capabilities.
- Members who lead a PnP project get to dig deeper into that area, resulting in higher quality features and products.
Completed
That wraps up our look at the PnP (Project in Project) concept and how to adopt it. With PnP, team members can gain project management experience while continuing to work on the main project, and your development process becomes more structured. Give it a try by selecting PnP projects that fit your team.
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