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Johanna’s Books
Tag Archives: inch pebble
Similarities and Differences in Project Management
I’m in Las Vegas waiting to get on a plan to Los Angeles to go to New Zealand for SDC. I led a workshop yesterday for real estate project managers about how to define success and manage some of the … Continue reading
When You’re in Chaos, Try Baby Steps
About a month ago, I spoke with a project manager who’d inherited a project in chaos. No one was making progress. He was stumped–he’d never worked on a project where the developers couldn’t do anything, the testers couldn’t do anything, … Continue reading
Posted in implement by feature
Tagged inch pebble, project management, project team, timebox
4 Comments
Are Your Defects Like Potholes?
It’s winter here in Massachusetts, and we’ve had lots of snow, ice, rain, snow, ice, snow, ice, rain. All that freezing and melting plays havoc with the roads. We have lots of potholes, and the local and state governments are … Continue reading
Posted in defect, implement by feature, incremental development
Tagged agile, inch pebble, timebox
2 Comments
Getting Status at the End of a (non-Agile) Project
Here’s a common scenario I was discussing with a colleague last night: They’re at the end of a project. They used some combination of a serial lifecycle, becoming more incremental as they proceed through the project. But they still have … Continue reading
Estimation Units Predict Schedule Slippage
I’ve been teaching a project management workshop, and one of the participants said something brilliant: “If you estimate in days, you’ll be off by days. If you estimate in weeks, you’ll be off by weeks.” If you estimate in months, … Continue reading
Cleaning Up the Office, Round 2
I’ve been attempting to clean up my office since I moved into it. I had some luck a while ago, using emergent design techniques for cleaning up. But that wasn’t enough. I was ready for an office redesign. So … Continue reading
Schedule Game #2: 90% Done
I was a fortunate young developer. In my first three months at work, I ran into the 90% done schedule game. I did it to myself. I estimated a particular task was going to take 6 weeks. Of course, … Continue reading
Posted in schedule games
Tagged inch pebble, iterative planning, management, one-on-one, transparency
6 Comments
Attempting to Define Maintenance
I’ve had several discussions about maintenance in the past few days. I’m beginning to think I have a different definition of maintenance than other people do :-). For me, maintenance is fixing problems in code. Maintenance is short, small, … Continue reading
Posted in defect, implement by feature, interim milestone
Tagged inch pebble, iterative planning
5 Comments
Avoid Student Syndrome
Student Syndrome occurs when the person with the task waits until the last possible moment to start. Some people spend their entire academic career waiting until the night before a project is due and then starting it, pulling an … Continue reading
Create Deliverable-Based Milestones
I’ve noticed a common theme among the projects in trouble I’ve encountered over the past few months: functional milestones without deliverable milestones as a part of the functional milestone. Here are examples of functional milestones: “requirements complete,” “code complete.” … Continue reading
