Estimates Cannot Be Precise “How long will that take?” No other question stops a tech team dead in it’s tracks. Without exaggeration, it is like asking a new parent, “So how much do you think it will cost to send you kid to college?” If you are that parent and paid your own way, or…

Classic project planning work backwards, you pick a large goal that will propel the business forward and add the right mix of enough man power and/or time to hit your goals. Make millions. Retire. If it were that simple, none of us would be dialing into 9am scrum meetings.There is a reason why when people…

This is the “Cone of Uncertainty.” The numbers behind the cone are based upon surveys of thousands of software projects and the differences between their estimated and actual schedules. As you travel into the cone, you are travelling further into the project’s timeline. Estimates made later in a project are base upon more data and…

Nothing dooms a project faster than its first estimate. From the fateful moment that someone even hints at one; the launch date, budget and staffing all seem to be broadcast to every possible stakeholder and locked down in an iron clad contract. This kind of behavior is why so many gun-shy developers just stopped giving estimates all…

To be honest, I never though much of Agile to begin with. By the time that silver bullet was shot, I was already a cynical veteran of the many buzzwords prior. Agile, like many of the other buzz phrases: Service Oriented Architecture, Extreme Programming, Internet Time, Web 2.0, etc; they are all just the endless…