Burn-down charts are awesome. They are part of agile’s set feedback loops increasing visibilty into the process. Take a look at a burn-down chart, and it will tell you if your agile team is on track or not. Here’s a simple example: Note that I haven’t used any unit on the Y axis. It can
You know what’s the best way to start the year? Going over success rates of projects! The Standish Group has been publishing the CHAOS report for more than twenty years now. I wasn’t surprised to find that they still use the same criteria for success and failure of projects. Here’s a summary of the CHAOS
What makes a successful project? Waterfall project management tells us it’s about meeting scope, time and cost goals. Do these success metrics also hold true to agile projects? Let’s see. In agile projects we learn new information all the time. It’s likely that the scope will change over time, because we find out things we
We like numbers because of their symbolic simplicity. In other words, we get them. They give us certainty, and therefore confidence. Which sounds more trustworthy: “It will take 5 months” or “It will take between 4 to 6 months”? The first one sounds more confident, and therefore we trust it more. After all, why don’t
“Why would you want a rough estimate, when I can do a more precise one?” And really, if we can do something better, why do it half way? There’s a simple answer, but I’ll give it after the long detailed one. Let’s start by asking again: Why estimate at all? There’s a whole #NoEstimates discussion,
Quite an interesting conversation and reaction to the #NoEstimates post. Good questions too, and frankly, to some I don’t have answers. I’ll try, anyway. Let’s start with classic project management. It tells us that in order to plan, we need to estimate cost and duration. Estimation techniques have been around for a while. @gil_zilberfeld all
The main difficulty with forecasting the future is that it hasn’t yet happened. – James Burke When I first heard about #NoEstimates, I thought it was not only provocative, it can also be damaging. The idea of working without estimates seems preposterous to many people. It did to me. I mean, how can you plan