My previous article discussed the importance of defining success as it relates to software projects and products. Now I want to look at some typical definitions of success and identify problems or short-comings with these definitions. From this analysis I aim to point the way towards a better definition of what success entails.
Typical Definitions [...]
Posts Tagged ‘project management’
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Can you define what makes a successful software development project or product? Do you know the criteria by which your current assignment will be judged a success? Does everyone associated with the project or product share the same definition? Defining what it means to be successful may seem obvious or trivial, but I expect that [...]
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I just attended a great presentation about Agile project management by Mike Cottmeyer at Agile Edmonton’s monthly meeting. What stood out for me were two comparisons Mike made between Agile project management and traditional approaches (e.g. waterfall project, PMI/PMP).
Dealing with Uncertainty
Mike characterized traditional approaches as trying to manage out uncertainty in the effort to achieve [...]
I recently read an interesting research paper titled Metrics and Laws of Software Evolution – The Nineties View by Lehman et al in the 1997 proceedings of the Software Metrics Symposium that discusses eight laws of software evolution. One set of graphs within the paper jumped out at me: they show the incremental growth of two systems over a series of releases. The graphs shared a common pattern: releases with higher than average incremental growth tended to alternate with one or more releases with lower than average growth. What are the implications of this commonly observed behavior for developing and using software? How can we use this pattern to our advantage? Read on to see my answers to these questions.
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Working as a software developer offers many challenges ranging from tracking down an elusive defect in third-party software to trying to determine what a client really wants. Perhaps the most difficult challenge, however, is succeeding as an oracle who can accurately divine the future – more commonly referred to as creating an estimate. A layperson [...]
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There are several strategies for producing software releases. One approach is to release by schedule – the software ships on a fixed date defined well in advance. Another method is to release based on budget – the work stops once the money available is exhausted. I believe, however, that the best strategy in general is [...]
This is a public service announcement to all project managers, business analysts, others working in the I.T. industry, and the general public: producing good software is hard. The next time you wonder why the software you are using crashed, or why your software development project is behind schedule, or why your software doesn’t meet the [...]
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I recently attended two seminars at the ICE 2006 Technology Conference in Edmonton thanks to my employer CGI. I enjoyed both presentations and regret not attending more. I was able to pull some useful tips and ideas from each seminar that resonated with me.
The first session was Lessons for Risk Management Taken from the [...]
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I have recently experienced two episodes of ‘crunch mode’ – the flurry of activity prior to deploying new functionality into production. The crunch happens because there is insufficient time to do everything that needs to be done. To compensate, people work longer or take shortcuts like skipping thorough testing. The result is often a higher [...]
My article on Understanding Project Schedules discussed four factors of project schedules: time, resources, scope, and quality. Time is often the factor of greatest interest to project stakeholders such as customers or management. They often ask when the project will be finished. I refer to this as elapsed time – the passage of days on [...]
Project schedules are obviously important for project managers and team leads. They are often asked questions like “When will this project be finished?”, with a typical follow-up question of “Can it be done sooner?”. So one key responsibility of project managers is to create and maintain the project schedule. Does this mean that software developers [...]
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This is a software organizational / project management pattern that I have come across many times but never seen written, so here it is.
Context: You are managing a team (four or more people). The primary goal of your team is to develop new software functionality (either by creating a new product or enhancing an existing [...]
