Category project-management - Tim Stanley

8 Days A Week

May 18, 2008

The physical amount of time spent on a task is not the same as the calendar time that it takes to complete the task. This is especially true when teams are working on multiple tasks. Project managers need to understand this when planning and getting estimates from a development team. More...

Why Adding Resources Doesn't Always Help

Apr 02, 2008

Those who've read the book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering know the mantra Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.  But why does it make it later?  How many resources should you put on a project to optimize the delivery date?  How do you explain and justify to the customers and teams the optimal number of resources to be on a project?  How do you explain that adding more than the optimal resources won't make the delivery date sooner?  Resource saturation is my answer. More...

Software Is Not Done

Jan 21, 2008
Puzzle
photo: Willi Heidelbach stock xchng

It's not that software is never finished.  It's just that done is not a good description to describe the status of software.

What's the status of the "Buy 12 get one free promotion?"

It's done!

What's done for one particular team isn't done for another.  Done for the business analyst isn't done for the the person doing deployment.  It leads to a lot of confusion among teams, particularly when teams are in multiple physical locations. More...