I’ve been thinking about estimation these days. After the healthcare.gov site fiasco, and all the schedule games–many of which are estimation problems, I thought about why we estimate. The larger the effort, the more we need to estimate. And, the more your estimate will be wrong. The more we estimate, the more we have schedule […]
Did you see Dwayne Phillips’ post today, Adding People to a Late Project? Dwayne says: Adding people to a late project only makes it later. We have known this for decades. Especially in the article he refers to, it seems as if there might be no end to the number of people added. Did anyone
I just read Scott Berkun’s The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work. For me, it was a mixed read. Yes, you can make a totally distributed team work. What you need to do: Make all of the work visible Keep everyone focused on one project at a time Keep all of the
I read Metrics with Impact by Michiel van Genuchten and Les Hatton in the July/August IEEE Software, pp 99-101 last week. They discuss a metric: Compound Annual Growth, CAGR for software. CAGR is interesting to me, because I’ve actually measured it before. Here are some graphs (no numeric data) to describe what happens in different
I had a great time recording an interview last week with Carolyn Seaman for OnTechnicalDebt.com. The interview is over at Pragmatic Ways for Your IT Team to Deal with Technical Debt. Alexandra queued us up. Carolyn and I had a great time discussing technical debt. I even managed to mention Chris Sterling’s book Managing Software
Are you interested in how to manage agile projects? Thinking of transitioning to agile? Available on March 7, 2013? I am leading an experiential one-day tutorial in conjunction with AgileIndy to introduce the ideas of agile project management to people who are interested in agile project management in Indianapolis on March 7, 2013. The tutorial
I have an article about test dashboards up on TechTarget. It’s called How to measure test progress: Every picture tells a story. The article has pictures. If you want more pictures, see Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management. Enjoy!
Now that the election is over, we have an opportunity to reflect on some of the project management and hiring practices. I’m going to blog here and over at Hiring Technical People because the bits are just too juicy to leave untouched. If you read nothing else, read Inside Orca: How the Romney Campaign Suppressed
Are you working long? My column, Management Myth 10: I can Measure the Work by the Time People Spend at Work is posted today. People who work long hours think they also work hard. They are. But they are often not working smart. If you have a lot to do, you want to work smart,
I wrote a column for Gantthead, How to Use Iteration Zero (or Not). I’m not a big fan of iteration zero, except for learning. In which case, it’s a great idea. Go take a look and see what you think. Please leave comments over there.