I’m writing the project management book. I’m noting that sometimes PMs (and teams) perform activities that have no lasting useful effect on the project. One example is doing estimation with feedback. If you estimate but never check reality against those estimates, that’s an example of “mental masturbation: it feels good but there’s no lasting […]
© 2005 Johanna Rothman. This column was originally published on Stickyminds.com Partway through an assessment, the senior manager asked me, “How long should the testing take?” The answer to the senior manager’s question is, “It depends.” If you do test-driven development, there is rarely more than an iteration’s worth of at-the-end testing. When I coach
With a little common sense and some dependable metrics, you can banish the “bug bucket” and keep the dreaded rework monster under control by creating a reasonable prediction of your project’s end. A reader recently asked me, “When planning a project phase, how do you account for the bugs that you know will be created?
Many of the project schedules I review contain milestone completions on Fridays and new task or phase beginnings on Mondays. With a Friday or Monday milestone, what you’re really saying is that people can work overtime all week and all weekend to make the Friday milestone, so they won’t be late for the Monday start.