4 ms·

Failing (and winning) at planning software projects

33 points by marcoow 6y ago

marcoow 6y ago
Planning and estimating projects (or sprints within projects) is associated with a lot of uncertainty and frustration on all sides. At the same time, teams feel they have to adopt processes like Scrum (or their own interpretation of it) and then expect that to fix everything which is usually not the case of course. In reality what I find lacking in most teams is direct communication and close collaboration as well as an appreciation for the valid and reasonable needs and interests of each and every project stakeholder (that's not only engineering and design but also product, marketing, finance maybe etc.). In this post, I present a set of relatively simple techniques to practice that remove a team's frustration and enable better estimates and predictability.
mikece 6y ago
When was the last time the functionality and scope of an application was defined BEFORE it was built (and didn't change before shipping)? The longer I program the more I like small, simple apps that can be chained together to do useful things... and be completely re-written at a later time when the full needs of the company are actually understood. What makes that re-writing or re-architecting a lot easier is clear documentation and modeling of the system at a high level, who the actors are, and what the essential/primary, secondary, and tertiary functions are as well as giving a score that reflects how essential each is to the company's core business (eg: a login/auth system would rate very low unless your product or service is a login/auth system -- this is a component that can/should be outsourced so you can focus on what makes money for your company). Write the app "just good enough to work and make money" but document the business as completely and clearly as possible with the assumption that at some point in the future a team that's new to the company could write a complete replacement of all of your software (which might just happen if you are successful enough to get a massive investment and need to rearchitect for future growth).
berkes 6y ago
> Actively keeping a backlog is most often simply a waste of time. That is not only the case for feature tasks but also for bug reports – a bug that has not been addressed for the past six months is unlikely to be addressed in the coming six months. This makes me uncomfortable. I don't exactly know why, but the thought that ideas, nice-to-haves, and bugs move to a /dev/null of some sort, does not resonate with me. What if that bug re-appears after 7 months. You'd want to pull up the old one and go: "see, it still hardly ever happens, but here's another one". You could rename the backlog to "archive", but that hardly makes it different: a backlog is still a list of stuff you had no time to think about.
- marcoow 6y ago
  Not maintaining a backlog doesn't necessarily mean you cannot collect ideas etc. anywhere. I think the two main points are: * putting effort into preparing proper tickets for all these ideas is likely wasted time as 90% of the ideas will never be taken on * keeping all the ideas together with the issues that are actually important creates noise and makes it harder to identify the actually important stuff; also having a backlog with thousands of open tickets puts loads of emotional pressure on teams since they are always feeling like they lack behind while in reality most of those thousands of tickets are irrelevant anyway. Also I'm not sure what the point of being able to say > "see, it still hardly ever happens, but here's another one". would be really (except for being right about the existence of something) – if the decision is not to fix the bug it's irrelevant still.
  - maaarghk 6y ago
    https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/#:~:text=5.%20Do%20you https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...
    - marcoow 6y ago
      Sure, you should have bugs documented somewhere but I'm not sure a bug that hasn't been fixed for x months needs to be there since it's a bug the team obviously decided not to care about.
stephc_int13 6y ago
"other stakeholders that have legitimate needs with regards to predictability and insight into a project's progress are left in the cold" Well, that's a bit dishonest, this is not really about coordination, this is about risk and money. This is about helping people who are not working on the project to sleep better. I believe that setting the budget and deadline from the start and then asking the team to scope the project is a reasonable way to manage risks, but not the other way around.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > not working on the project to sleep better I believe it's more sinister than that: it's to prevent the people who are working on the project from sleeping at all. Remember, most developers are on a salary, which means minimum 40 hours a week, but a maximum of 168. People who view other humans as expendable "resources" - the amoral types who inevitably rise to prominence in corporate America - then see planning as a strategy to push that number as high as possible. They thus insist that an inherently unpredictable process - software development - must be 100% predictable and, when that inevitably turns out not to be the case (yet again), they demand punitive uncompensated overtime. This isn't an accident.
  - marcoow 6y ago
    Hey, I’m the author. I think you Mis-interprete what I’m saying - of course understanding timelines and budget will often be a legitimate need of one or some stakeholders, among others. And of course making teams stick to deadlines when that’s not possible is bullshit. But the other extreme - demanding that nothing can ever be estimated and understood well up-front - is equally wrong. In the Limited scope of an iteration, it is well possible to reduce risk and uncertainty at least a good amount through thorough analysis and preparation.
    - stephc_int13 6y ago
      I disagree, in my opinion it is never legitimate to pressure people into predicting the future, and it simply never works. There is a very this counter-intuitive thing about predicting the future. We tend to believe that by cutting our predictions in smaller and smaller pieces, our predictions will be closer to reality, or at least more manageable. But there is nothing further from the truth, the best predictions are made when someone experienced in the field is looking at the big picture and try to give a rough estimation. This has been proven again and again. At the end od the day, people are working and projects gets finished not because, but in spite of micro-management and other unhelpful practices.

33 points by marcoow 6y ago

Planning and estimating projects (or sprints within projects) is associated with a lot of uncertainty and frustration on all sides. At the same time, teams feel they have to adopt processes like Scrum (or their own interpretation of it) and then expect that to fix everything which is usually not the case of course. In reality what I find lacking in most teams is direct communication and close collaboration as well as an appreciation for the valid and reasonable needs and interests of each and every project stakeholder (that's not only engineering and design but also product, marketing, finance maybe etc.). In this post, I present a set of relatively simple techniques to practice that remove a team's frustration and enable better estimates and predictability.

mikece 6y ago

When was the last time the functionality and scope of an application was defined BEFORE it was built (and didn't change before shipping)? The longer I program the more I like small, simple apps that can be chained together to do useful things... and be completely re-written at a later time when the full needs of the company are actually understood. What makes that re-writing or re-architecting a lot easier is clear documentation and modeling of the system at a high level, who the actors are, and what the essential/primary, secondary, and tertiary functions are as well as giving a score that reflects how essential each is to the company's core business (eg: a login/auth system would rate very low unless your product or service is a login/auth system -- this is a component that can/should be outsourced so you can focus on what makes money for your company). Write the app "just good enough to work and make money" but document the business as completely and clearly as possible with the assumption that at some point in the future a team that's new to the company could write a complete replacement of all of your software (which might just happen if you are successful enough to get a massive investment and need to rearchitect for future growth).

berkes 6y ago

> Actively keeping a backlog is most often simply a waste of time. That is not only the case for feature tasks but also for bug reports – a bug that has not been addressed for the past six months is unlikely to be addressed in the coming six months. This makes me uncomfortable. I don't exactly know why, but the thought that ideas, nice-to-haves, and bugs move to a /dev/null of some sort, does not resonate with me. What if that bug re-appears after 7 months. You'd want to pull up the old one and go: "see, it still hardly ever happens, but here's another one". You could rename the backlog to "archive", but that hardly makes it different: a backlog is still a list of stuff you had no time to think about.

marcoow 6y ago
Not maintaining a backlog doesn't necessarily mean you cannot collect ideas etc. anywhere. I think the two main points are: * putting effort into preparing proper tickets for all these ideas is likely wasted time as 90% of the ideas will never be taken on * keeping all the ideas together with the issues that are actually important creates noise and makes it harder to identify the actually important stuff; also having a backlog with thousands of open tickets puts loads of emotional pressure on teams since they are always feeling like they lack behind while in reality most of those thousands of tickets are irrelevant anyway. Also I'm not sure what the point of being able to say > "see, it still hardly ever happens, but here's another one". would be really (except for being right about the existence of something) – if the decision is not to fix the bug it's irrelevant still.
- maaarghk 6y ago
  https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/#:~:text=5.%20Do%20you https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...
  - marcoow 6y ago
    Sure, you should have bugs documented somewhere but I'm not sure a bug that hasn't been fixed for x months needs to be there since it's a bug the team obviously decided not to care about.

stephc_int13 6y ago

"other stakeholders that have legitimate needs with regards to predictability and insight into a project's progress are left in the cold" Well, that's a bit dishonest, this is not really about coordination, this is about risk and money. This is about helping people who are not working on the project to sleep better. I believe that setting the budget and deadline from the start and then asking the team to scope the project is a reasonable way to manage risks, but not the other way around.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> not working on the project to sleep better I believe it's more sinister than that: it's to prevent the people who are working on the project from sleeping at all. Remember, most developers are on a salary, which means minimum 40 hours a week, but a maximum of 168. People who view other humans as expendable "resources" - the amoral types who inevitably rise to prominence in corporate America - then see planning as a strategy to push that number as high as possible. They thus insist that an inherently unpredictable process - software development - must be 100% predictable and, when that inevitably turns out not to be the case (yet again), they demand punitive uncompensated overtime. This isn't an accident.
- marcoow 6y ago
  Hey, I’m the author. I think you Mis-interprete what I’m saying - of course understanding timelines and budget will often be a legitimate need of one or some stakeholders, among others. And of course making teams stick to deadlines when that’s not possible is bullshit. But the other extreme - demanding that nothing can ever be estimated and understood well up-front - is equally wrong. In the Limited scope of an iteration, it is well possible to reduce risk and uncertainty at least a good amount through thorough analysis and preparation.
  - stephc_int13 6y ago
    I disagree, in my opinion it is never legitimate to pressure people into predicting the future, and it simply never works. There is a very this counter-intuitive thing about predicting the future. We tend to believe that by cutting our predictions in smaller and smaller pieces, our predictions will be closer to reality, or at least more manageable. But there is nothing further from the truth, the best predictions are made when someone experienced in the field is looking at the big picture and try to give a rough estimation. This has been proven again and again. At the end od the day, people are working and projects gets finished not because, but in spite of micro-management and other unhelpful practices.