Smart Software Development on Impossible Schedules

Andrew Stellman writes "Jennifer Greene and I have an article in the new issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal called "Quick-Kill Project Management: How to do smart software development even when facing impossible schedules." We got a lot of great feedback from our last article on open source development, but there were a bunch of people who wanted to know whether it was really feasible to do planning and reviews on a tight schedule. That's a fair question, and this article is meant to be an answer to it. We pulled out bare-bones project management practices that will help you protect your project from the most common and serious problems, and gave instructions and advice for implementing them that should work in a real-life, high-pressure programming situation."

Easy!

[gillbates]

Stop reading slashdot!

Inflation doesn't make up for a bad schedule!

[Anonymous Coward]

"We developed a rule of taking the engineers estimates and double them. Of course we're still running a little late ;)"

Problem is Scotty already doubled them. Now just wait till the admiral gets them.

Re:Why do people buy into this nonsense?

[Ohreally_factor]

And more recently, Allchin [microsoft.com]. =)

The EA method...

[abigsmurf]

Companies should follow EA's tactics. Say to the coders "you'll have an easy schedule during the majority of a project but at crunch time, you're expected to work huge hours with minimal overtime pay" You start the coders on a project nearing crunch time, have them slave away till it's finished then move them onto another project that's nearing crunch time. If no projects are nearing crunch time move ahead the schedule on one knowing full well you can't meet the new date but still force the overworked coders to give 110% to attempt to meet this impossible target. You keep all the experienced programmers doing the stress free base work and once the outline is done, you move them to start another project. The vital experienced coders stay happy and stick with the company and the dime-a-dozen average coders have all the work they could possibly give squeezed out of them for minimal pay. Gotta love an industry with few/weak unions...

Drag and drop

[Anonymous Coward]

How about drag and drop components to speed things up? Just drag the boss to the window and drop him. Make sure you compose and print a suicide note with his computer and printer first though. Then while they try to sort things out and hire a new boss just continue to work on the project and spruce up your resume.

How's that version of "Quick-Kill Project Management"?

Slashdot's bot checker a mind reader?

please type the word in this image: motive

Re:Techniques don't make up for a bad schedule!

[fbjon]

the anomolay

Something like blind sex, I presume?

( -> anomaly)

Re:Techniques don't make up for a bad schedule!

[Rob the Bold]

We developed a rule of taking the engineers estimates and double them.

I've found a more reliable estimation rule is to take the estimate, double it, and change units to the next larger (common) increment of time. E.g. 2 hours => 4 days, 5 weeks => 10 months.