The End of Software Development as We Know It?


"Well, Roscoe," I said, "I've got another problem with your approach. Given this heightened sensitivity to meeting commitments, won't each individual estimate be so conservative that when you roll up all the tasks into a schedule, you'll find out that the project shouldn't go forward because it's going to take three times too long?"

"Kind of a long sentence there, Joe," winked Roscoe. "Yes, that is a problem. And I have two answers to it.

"First, you do have to get past the issue of sandbagging.[9] You have to push back on estimates that are so conservative that no task or commitment is ever missed. You need to get people to be estimating so that they make 80 to 90 percent of their commitments. Today I would guess we don't hit 50 percent, which is ridiculous.

[9] Sandbagging is an American slang term that implies inflating an estimate so that you are sure that you will always make it with ease. Salespeople have occasionally been known to sandbag estimates of the sales potential of their territory downward in hopes of getting a sales quota they can easily exceed. Sales managers may let this slip by them once in awhile, but it is unheard of for this to happen two years in a row. The second time it happens, the salesperson is either fired or promoted to sales manager, as the case may be.

"Second, maybe we should cancel more projects early. My problem is that I see too many schedules that are nothing more than a roll up of everyone's best case estimates on the subtasks. These aren't schedules; they are exercises in wishful thinking. These projects are doomed to failure before they ever get out of the blocks. The worker bees are telling their managers what they think they want to hear, and the managers are drinking their own bath water. Then a few months or years later, the whole charade comes crashing down around everyone's ears, and the witch-hunts begin. YOU SOFTWARE GUYS HAVE GOT TO STOP DOING THAT!!!"

The blood vessel on Roscoe's right temple looked as though it was about to burst, so I backed off a bit and made my parting shot a polite one.




The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
The Software Development Edge(c) Essays on Managing Successful Projects
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2006
Pages: 269

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