Fidelity is truth. In software projects we need to know how much “truth” is in the plan and how much “fiction” might be in the plan. We know that the more detailed the wbs, the greater probability that it is truth, rather than fiction. The exception to this involves documenting heuristic tasks and estimates in…
Assumptions
Sometimes it’s really beneficial to get a team all on the same page before you start something. Starting a design initiative for a software project is a good time to do this. One good way to get consensus or at least to determine how far apart developers are ideologically, is to document the assumptions that…
Sufficiency
Sufficiency is a word that we don’t use very frequently. It has a high correlation with enough. In lean management circles, anything more than enough is waste. So how much is enough? How good is good enough? How soon is soon enough? How clean is clean enough? How fast is fast enough? Often we reward…
A missing product role
Every product needs a champion. Trouble is, in the enterprise application software space, sometimes this role is left unfilled. Lately it seems like the enterprise space is dominated by project/program methodology, more than software design methodology. When your customer is the product owner, the team does not have a champion to rally around. With all…
Productive communication
Sometimes I get e-mail at work where the thread consists of a long chain of short messages, and in order to determine the needed response, it is necessary to contemplate the thread from beginning to end. This is especially heinous in corporations where required e-mail sigs and disclaimers are chunky. As each person adds their…
Chicken and egg
I continually argue with myself about whether tools or process should come first… Adding process without tools makes it hard to enforce process rules, implement consistently, or measure compliance. Adding tools without clear process definition is also futile, as people tend to use tools differently, and tools can impose limitations on process that make later…
Rest
This project has been a fight. Fighting with customers, fighting with the team, fighting with the technology. I think everyone involved feels pretty beat up. At the end, I look at the accomplishment and say to myself – it’s getting pretty good. I need a rest. I want the customer to take advantage of the…
Reality
Spent the weekend (really the last two weeks) preparing to engage some business partners on a project whose plan got somewhat sideways. Original estimates were smaller than really required. Requirements took much longer to elicit because the business vision was not complete, nor were all that participated invested in a vision. There has been a…
The sniff test
When someone asks you to do something different or unusual, it must pass the “sniff” test. Is what this person is asking “reasonable”. Does the accommodation represent a material departure from process/protocol/custom that may/will have impact in other ways? Is it a one time deal, or setting a new precedent? Is the cost worth the…
The plan
The plan is the set of steps to get to “done”. What happens when there is not enough time or money to get to “done”? We can stop and adjust the schedule – making more time. We can decide to spend the money. We can decide that “done” means something different that costs less or…