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>> We have six weeks to shipping... That tells me that they are dealing with release cycles measured in months. No wonder the pressure to add features at the

by russell 17y ago

>> We have six weeks to shipping... That tells me that they are dealing with release cycles measured in months. No wonder the pressure to add features at the last minute. Those of us in the web world are used to releases every week or even every couple of days. Then the releases are run like subways. The train pulls into the station and you board the features. No one worries about a four week project because another train will be there when it is done. If another project gets bumped, no big deal, another train will pick it up. This can even work with customer hosted servers. I worked on a project where a couple thousand customers received a new server every week or two, including database updates. The customer's server called home every night and asked if its replacement was ready. If it was it downloaded it. If you have agile, automatic delivery, you dont need a lot of heavyweight process. Some process, yes, but not the kind that makes millionaires out of consultants.

Alex63 17y ago
I wish that process consulting was making me a millionaire. That aside, I think in one of Jerry Weinberg's books he says something along the lines of "things are they way they are because they got that way." In other words, in most cases processes in big shops have evolved in response to past circumstances. It's kind of like contracts - they're long and complicated, but each clause reflects a lesson that someone learned in the past (the hard way). I like the idea of regular, frequent delivery, but my experience has been that for a lot of IT shops that is not a practical approach, either because of user or management expectations. And in a few, rare cases it may be because of IT's technical capability. More often the heavyweight process has evolved because of issues that have occurred in the past (unplanned outages, etc.), or because of management's desire for "predictability" in their delivery process.

by russell 17y ago

Alex63 17y ago

I wish that process consulting was making me a millionaire. That aside, I think in one of Jerry Weinberg's books he says something along the lines of "things are they way they are because they got that way." In other words, in most cases processes in big shops have evolved in response to past circumstances. It's kind of like contracts - they're long and complicated, but each clause reflects a lesson that someone learned in the past (the hard way). I like the idea of regular, frequent delivery, but my experience has been that for a lot of IT shops that is not a practical approach, either because of user or management expectations. And in a few, rare cases it may be because of IT's technical capability. More often the heavyweight process has evolved because of issues that have occurred in the past (unplanned outages, etc.), or because of management's desire for "predictability" in their delivery process.