WHAT TAKES THE TIME?

Requirements and design phases are a bit like adultery. They typically consist of bouts of intense activity interspersed with periods of quite low levels of activity. It is not the intense activity that causes traditional requirements and design phases to be as long as they are. Instead it is things like:

• Large amounts of documentation to be produced; much of it caused by the write, review, revise nature of traditional requirements and design approaches.

• Loss of continuity due to the put-down/pick-up nature of the traditional approach.

• Delay in getting responses and/or decisions.

• Sometimes somewhat unfocused effort either resulting in, or because of, low team spirit.

• Difficulty in getting the right people at the right time.

• Interruptions.

• People having other responsibilities ("Hey, I've got my own job to do!").

• The long time between reviews, walkthroughs or meetings means that it is possible for things to go a long way wrong before they are spotted.

• The natural overhead in traditional project management methods and structures.

• Meetings (and the difficulties of coordinating people's diaries ).

• Getting things (decisions, documents) responded to, reviewed and approved.

• Reworking and refining (of documents, ideas etc.).