Stone Blocks and Software

How does this block moving relate to software? The movement of the stone block is analogous to creating source code. If you have 100 days to complete a software project, you either need to complete 1/100 of the source code each day, or you need to do work that will allow you to complete the remaining source code faster. Because the work of creating source code is much less tangible than the work of moving a stone block, progress at the beginning of a software project can be harder to gauge. Software projects are vulnerable to a "last minute syndrome" in which the project team has little sense of urgency at the beginning of a project, fritters away days on end, and works itself into a desperate frenzy by the end of the project. Thinking of a project's source code as a stone block makes it clear that you can't hope to conduct a successful project by sprinting at the end. Every day, a software project manager should ask, "Did we move the block one day closer to our destination today? If not, did we reduce our remaining work by one day?"

Another way that moving a stone block relates to software is that, eventually, no matter how much planning you do, you do have to move the block; you do have to write the source code. Source-code creation on all but the smallest projects involves an enormous amount of detail work, and it's easy to underestimate it.