Abstract
In software projects, like in most situations involving human relationships, it is worth the effort to provide meaningful information to people so that they gain situational awareness and make intelligent choices. Complete awareness is of course neither possible nor needed, but a small effort can go a long way toward significant improvements and avoiding major contentions. Schedule uncertainty of 30–50% or more is likely to create unneeded pressure and turmoil on any project. Many people operate at these levels of uncertainty routinely and for long periods. On the other hand, verbally maintaining that we work at 10–15% uncertainty, without being able to support the claims with data, is as unnerving if not more so. If we can find a workable method for bringing the uncertainty level reliably to 10–15%, supported by meaningful data, it will spare the team and clients valuable energy, unnecessary worry, and loss of time.
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- 1.
Jeff Sutherland and J.J. Sutherland, Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (New York: Crown Business, 2014)
- 2.
Paul Graham, “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule,” July 2009,— www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
- 3.
Clearly specified requirement does not mean voluminous specifications. To make it more complicated, a clear specification does not guarantee shared knowledge and ease of communication. A great way to specify requirements is the subject of the book Specification by Example by Gojko Adzic (Shelter Island, NY: Manning Publications, 2011).
- 4.
Having teams where people freely communicate with each other is crucial for many aspects of high performance. Where this has a positive effect on context switching is that a novice developer will not feel the need to interrupt a chain of people and ask for assistance in initiating a discussion with another project member.
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Identifying next action to move us toward a desired outcome is the step that closes the open loops as described in the stress management and productivity framework in Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity by David Allen (New York: Viking, 2001).
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© 2020 Dimitre Dimitrov
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Dimitrov, D. (2020). Adjustments. In: Software Project Estimation. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5025-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-5025-9_6
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