Tracking deliverables throughout project phases helps teams monitor progress, address gaps, and prevent delays. By linking deliverables directly to specific roles, accountability and clear expectations are also established within the project team.

Enterprise IT projects create numerous deliverables that can be managed using tracking tools, such as Project Deliverables Inventory and Project Deliverables Roadmap. Both conceptual models can be implemented using the project's preferred tools or technology.

Project Deliverables Inventory

The Project Deliverables Inventory is a tool for tracking formal deliverables in enterprise IT projects. Listing all deliverables, specifying responsible roles, and providing status updates promotes accountability and transparency in project progress.

This inventory can be applied across different delivery models, as shown in the following examples:

• Waterfall application: In a bank’s core system replacement project, the inventory tracks business requirement documents, technical specifications, and testing reports, ensuring teams know what to deliver at each stage and helping to prevent delays.
• Agile (Scrum or SAFe) application: In a Scrum-based mobile app development project, a simplified inventory can track user stories, sprint backlogs, and increments, allowing the team to stay focused on critical deliverables while maintaining sight of overall project objectives.
• Hybrid model application: In projects implementing new enterprise software alongside infrastructure upgrades, the inventory can track waterfall-based infrastructure deliverables using a simplified version of iterative software releases in Agile.

Table 20 illustrates a partial inventory for a Waterfall project. It details the accountable person for each deliverable and its current status, categorised as Not Started, In Progress, or Done. The table also allows for additional tracking details, including Start Date, Target Completion Date, Review Status, Approval Status, Date Approved, Latest Version, and Link.

Project Deliverables Roadmap

The Project Deliverables Roadmap visually represents the timeline, interdependencies, and responsibilities tied to each project deliverable. This tool is handy in projects with complex timelines and multiple participants, enabling project teams to align on critical milestones and sequencing tasks across disciplines.

This roadmap can be applied across different delivery models, as shown in the following examples:

• Waterfall application: In a bank’s core system replacement project, the roadmap charts deliverables such as business requirement documents, technical specifications, and testing reports across the project’s linear phases. This allows the team to track the dependencies between tasks and ensures that each deliverable is completed sequentially to prevent bottlenecks.
• Agile (Scrum or SAFe) application: In a Scrum-based mobile app development project, a simplified roadmap can track the progression of user stories, sprint backlogs, and increments over multiple sprints. This gives the team a clear view of sprint goals and interdependencies, ensuring that critical deliverables align with project milestones.
• Hybrid model application: In projects involving Agile and Waterfall components, such as an enterprise software implementation alongside infrastructure upgrades, the roadmap can track the infrastructure-related Waterfall deliverables and integrate them with the Agile software release cycles. This ensures both streams are aligned and any dependencies are mapped out.

Figure 10 illustrates a partial roadmap for a Waterfall project. It shows the disciplines responsible for completing each deliverable, designated periods for starting and completing these deliverables, specific deliverables required at each phase of the project lifecycle, dependencies and interdependencies between deliverables, and the optimal timing for recruiting participants just in time for delivery.