I ran a little workshop today about transitioning to agile. I was talking about timeboxed iterations, and one of the participants asked this question. “So I don’t quite finish one of the features I want to finish in this iteration–and it’s the end of the project. I think it’s going to take me a […]
I’m catching up with my blog reading. Several posts caught my eye, all dealing with taking time to think: When you take time to think between sessions, the sessions may go faster. You’ll almost certainly have a better outcome. (Esther and I learned this on Behind Closed Doors.) See Ron Jeffries’ take on thinking: Shooting
Thierry poses a question I’ve heard in several of my PM workshops this week and last week: When should the team do the architectural work? Thierry’s concerned if his team continues to implement by feature, how can the team do the architectural work? If they take an iteration or two to deal with architecture,
Joshua asked me to clarify what I meant by implementing by architecture. Here’s my picture-story. When a team implements by architecture, they tend to be functionally-based teams implementing across the architecture. When a team implements by feature, they are cross-functional teams. When teams implement by feature, they do what’s needed in whatever part
Scott points out Software Product Delivery – 20 Rules? that you should do the riskiest part of the project first. (He explains that you modify that given what’s most important.) I’d add a further refinement: that what’s most important better provide the most value. If it doesn’t, do the most valuable parts first. You
I taught my project dashboard workshop today. One of the things most people want to measure is progress towards project completion. But you can’t measure project completion progress unless you have completed features: developed, integrated, and tested features. A completed feature is done enough for someone to use. Implementing by architecture leaves all the
I’m flying over the Mediterranean Sea right now. And I have high speed wireless access. Pretty darn amazing. I’m using the system Boeing developed and is abandoning. I suspect price might have been an issue. On my flight, the price is free–because the service is being shut down. For me, high speed internet access is
True confessions: I was hoping to finish the draft (of Successful Project Management) for technical review today. I didn’t. I knew on Tuesday and called Daniel to let him know where I was. This past week I focused on finishing chapters. I have about 16 chapters and one appendix. I don’t know if the book
Bruce sent me a pointer to this post, There is no spoon. I have to admit, I don’t understand the spoon part. I suspect there’s a reference to a move I haven’t seen. (Fellow writers: be aware that many of your readers do not share your popular culture norms 🙂 But if you read
I’m writing part of the PM book, and said this about the minimum requirements for a configuration management system (CMS): Modern CMSs can branch, label, automatically merge multiple authors’ changes, and allow for developers to work in their own private workspaces (sandboxes). If your CMS can’t do that, dump it and obtain a new