Plan A Project In Detail

Every software project needs a plan. The level of detail should be appropriate for the size and complexity of the project. At an absolute minimum, you will need:

• A PERT chart showing the interdependencies among tasks.
• A GANTT chart showing when activity will be underway on each task.
• A list of realistic milestones (based on previous projects).
• A set of standards for writing documentation and code.
• An allocation of people to various tasks.

As projects increase in complexity, each of these requirements becomes more detailed and more complex, and other documentation becomes necessary. A project without a plan is out of control before it even starts. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Wonderland, "If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there!"

Reference:

Glaser, G., "Managing Projects in the Computer Industry," IEEE Computer, October 1984.

Allocate Appropriate Resources

Artificially constrained schedules and inappropriate budgets will doom a project regardless of the quality of the people or the availability of tools, languages, and process.

If you try to compress either schedule or budget, the engineers working on the project will not work efficiently, there will be no wiggle room when the inevitable slippage occurs, morale will suffer, and the project will probably cost more than what would otherwise be considered reasonable anyway.

In short, tightening a schedule or budget to land a contract or to get stakeholder sign-off will only ensure your failure to deliver. The goal isn't to get project approval. The goal is to get approval for a project that can actually succeed.


Reference:
DeMarco, T., "Why Does Software Cost So Much?" IEEE Software, March 1993.

Minor Underestimates Are Not Always Bad

Assuming morale has not been diminished, members of a project that is perceived as slightly behind schedule will tend to work hard at catching up, thus increasing productivity. Similarly, members of a project that is perceived as slightly ahead of schedule often take vacation days, work less hours, read their email longer, and ease up in other ways, thus decreasing productivity. In other words, the cost estimation itself will affect the project outcome. Any specific project may expend less resources if it is slightly underestimated than if it is slightly overestimated.

Be careful, though! If project members believe that the schedule is ridiculously underestimated or that estimates are underestimated on purpose, then morale and productivity will decrease. Worse still, you, as a manager, might start to gain a reputation of being incompetent, manipulative, or both. If that happens then project members will begin to perceive all estimates, even good ones, as bad.

As long as a minor underestimate is a natural occurrence then there is no need to worry that it'll effect the schedule. Team productivity has a certain amount of flexibility to compensate as long as there are minor overestimates to balance things out.


Reference:
Abdel-Hamid, T., and Madnick, S., "Impact on Schedule Estimation on Software Project Behavior," IEEE Software, July 1986.

Reassess Schedules Regularly

Schedules are usually set at the beginning of a project. These include intermediate deadlines as well as the product delivery deadline. As each phase is completed, the schedule must be reassessed. A behind-schedule project rarely recovers during subsequent phases. Thus, a project that is, for example, one month late at completion of design will be at least one month late for delivery. In most cases adding or removing people will only delay the project further. The most common technique is not to change the product delivery date. (After all, we don't want to disappoint the customer just yet; they might stop paying.) As each intermediate milestone is missed by an increasing amount of time, the time allocated to testing is reduced more and more. At the end, one of two situations is inevitable:

1. The product is shipped without the necessary quality.
2. The customer is notified of a very large schedule slip very late in the project.

Neither is acceptable. As a manager, your responsibility is to prevent disasters.

Instead, establish a working relationship with customers and/or management levels above you. Report every possible date change (usually a slip) and discuss the alternative strategies for overcoming them. The Agile methodology is very keen to cut out features in order to hit delivery deadlines. Only early intervention and involvement by all parties can prevent slippage escalation.

Reference:

Shore, J., Warden, S., The Art of Agile Development, O'Reilly Media, 2008.

Gilb, T., Principles of Software Engineering Management, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1988.

Believe in the Schedule

Probability of Project Success

Once a feasible schedule is established and appropriate resources allocated, all parties must believe the schedule. Engineers will not succeed in meeting a schedule if they don't believe it is realistic. The probability of success is more a function of faith in the schedule than its realism

The best advice is to have engineers set schedules. Unfortunately, this is not always possible. The second best advice is to involve engineers in the tough trade-offs that occur between functionality, schedule, and project abandonment. Few engineers would rather lose their job because a project is canceled than strive to meet a tough schedule.


Reference:
Lederer, A., and Prasad, J., "Nine Management Guidelines for Better Cost Estimating," Communications of the ACM, February 1992.

Know Before You Count

"Know before you count" is a software development management principle simply stated by Gerald Weinberg as, "Before you can count anything, you've got to know something." He is talking about the many people who count things in software but don't know what they are counting. He provides a great example. We have data concerning what percentage of the software industry is involved with maintenance rather than development. But can we recognize maintenance? Is a "new" development that completely replaces an existing system considered maintenance or development? Is a "modification" to an existing system that doubles current functionality and removes 95 percent of old functionality considered maintenance or development?

When selecting metrics for your project, make sure that what you are measuring relates to what you are trying to achieve. This often entails using multiple metrics. Remember: Even if everybody is measuring something one way, that way is not automatically right for you. Think about your metrics. Since everything can be observed (and in most cases measured), carefully select what you want to observe (and measure).


References:
Stark, G., Durst, R., and Vowell, C., "Using Metrics in Management Decision-Making," IEEE Computer, September 1994.

Weinberg, G., Rethinking Systems Analysis and Design, New York: Dorset House, 1988.

Avoid The Impossible

This may seem like obvious advice. One the other hand, many projects commit to delivering their product on schedules that are 100 percent impossible. Barry Boehm has defined the "impossible region" as a relationship between the expected time to develop a product and the number of person-months (PM) to be consumed. Specifically, the elapsed time (T) from writing a software requirements specification to product delivery will not be less than 2.15 times the cube root of person-months, that is,

If you have a project that is estimated to take 5 person-months then this rule says that the project can't get finished faster than 3.7 calendar months.

Ninety-nine percent of completed projects have obeyed this rule. If you think you can do better then here are some ideas to revisit:

• Productivity and quality are inseparable
• Every complex problem has a solution

Reference:

Boehm, B., Software Engineering Economics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981.

Software Cost Estimation Methods

Numerous cost estimation methods are available commercially. Each is based on data collected from a large set of completed projects. Any of these methods can be used to generate ball park estimates for your software development project. To use them to generate more accurate estimates, you must tailor them to your work environment. This tailoring adapts the model to your type of applications and tools. It eliminates variables that are invariant in your environment. It adds variables that are productivity-influential in your environment.

Chapter 29 of Barry Boehm's Software Engineering Economics explains in detail how to tailor the Constructive Cost Model (COCOMO) to your environment. Similar tailoring guidance is provided with other cost estimation methods. You must fully embrace the spirit of such tailoring, or you will end up with dismally inaccurate results.


Reference:
Boehm, B., Software Engineering Economics, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981.

Enneagram Test

A year ago I took an online Enneagram test. My top two personality types were:

1. The Achiever
2. The Perfectionist

Is it all mumbo-jumbo? Is it accurate? I don't know but that doesn't mean it can't be helpful. It is a good way to practice some self-reflection. It can act as an aid to give me some points to consider. You might find it fun to read the core values for each of the Enneagram types and consider which you most closely align with. Or try to develop your own core values. Doing so from scratch is a fairly difficult thing to do. There is nothing wrong from taking what you agree with from each of the Enneagram types.

Our beliefs change over time so it is valuable to test ourselves on occasion. I know my political beliefs have changed. The funny thing is that my friends noticed more quickly than I did. We hold onto labels even though our beliefs change and the labels become inaccurate.

Collect Data Unobtrusively

Data collection is extremely important to help with future cost predictions, to assess the current state of a project or organization, to assess the effect of a change in management, process, or technology, and so on. On the other hand, data collection in an obtrusive fashion -- for example, if it requires software developers to do considerable extra work -- is meaningless because its collection affects the data itself. Furthermore, data collected from developers who do not want to provide such data will likely be useless because it is unlikely that an uncooperative developer will provide meaningful data.

The best way to collect data is automatically, with no developer-perceived interference. Obviously you cannot do this all the time for all data, but you should automate data collection whenever you can. However, you must be careful not to cross any lines concerning privacy. Respect your employees privacy and be transparent about what and how you collect.


Reference:
Pfleeger, S., "Lessons Learned in Building a Corporate Metrics Program," IEEE Software, May 1993.