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Have you been on projects where halfway down the road it seems increasingly
unlikely that you will finish as desired, but you can’t put your finger on it and
simply push through with a growing resentment? Have you been in meetings
where scope discussions get increasingly difficult and depressing, ultimately
sucking the energy out of everyone instead of enabling them to move forward
with certainty and determination? Wouldn’t it be good if a confident assertion
for the project’s ability to deliver is made as early as 1 or 2 months into the
effort? What additional value and quality of working relationships can you
generate if the time for estimation, tracking, and change management is
slashed by a factor of 10 while simultaneously providing clients and team
members with true peace of mind so they can focus on other important business
activities? This book provides a practical tool that will help with all of
this—it is a how-to book. But ultimately it is about the relationships we
develop during projects and the appreciation of our colleagues and business
partners.
It is 2019! Yet estimation and forecasting in the software development industry
are still considered mystifying at best, and an archaic and obsolete concept
at worst. Reliable forecasting continues to present a challenge for many teams
and software development organizations. The practices associated with the
two predominant software development methodologies are inadequate.
Methods related to waterfall development are notoriously bad for long-term
forecasting because they encourage too much information processing too
early and have a tendency to skew reality into a Gantt chart. And methods
that relate well to agile software development are not as notoriously bad,
however, mostly because long-term forecasting is avoided altogether. This is
problematic in many cases because it pushes important decisions too late in
the project, adds unnecessary stress on people’s relationships, and ultimately
diminishes the chances for successful projects. |
