How to turn your time estimates into reliable predictions — and communicate them.
projmgmt
The following entry is a record in the “Catalogue of Catastrophe” - a list of failed or troubled projects from around the world. Airbus SAS - France Project name : A380 Project type : Commercial aircraft development Date : Dec 2000 - Oct 2007 Cost : $6.
Richard Speed reports via The Register: A study has found that software projects adopting Agile practices are 268 percent more likely to fail than those that do not. Even though the research commissioned by consultancy Engprax could be seen as a thinly veiled plug for Impact Engineering methodology...
Embarking on a new software development project is similar to setting sail on uncharted waters. While the destination might be
The Adventures of Action Item, Professional Superhero - Official Homepage
Planning poker, also called Scrum poker, is a consensus-based, gamified technique for estimating, mostly used for timeboxing in Agile principles. In planning poker, members of the group make estimates by playing numbered cards face-down to the table, instead of speaking them aloud. The cards are revealed, and the estimates are then discussed. By hiding the figures in this way, the group can avoid the cognitive bias of anchoring, where the first number spoken aloud sets a precedent for subsequent estimates.
The Sith Lord Darth Vader, of Star Wars fame, often gets a bad rap, particularly in what we all think of as his 'dark years'. From a certain perspective his mass murder, brutal oppression, and frequent deception to serve his own ends makes him seem like a pretty bad guy.
How we communicate makes an enormous impact on our work. One of the best strategies for improving communication in a team is making it open
When you’re defining your software or new product’s requirements, a set of criteria come into play. Acceptance criteria are one part of those criteria that are either agreed upon or come out of client/customer discussions. Unlike requirements, acceptance criteria define what must happen when a decision point such as an objective has been met. Acceptance ... Read more
Projects are a popular way of organizing software efforts, but long-running product teams are often superior
Software developers don’t really like to make schedules. Usually, they try to get away without one. “It’ll be done when it’s done!” they say, expecting that such a brave, funny zinger will reduce t…
Use a flexible responsibility-assignment matrix to clarify UX roles and responsibilities, anticipate team collaboration points, and maintain productivity in product development.
In 2017, I went to Facebook on a sabbatical from my faculty position at Yale. I created a team to build a storage system called Delos at the bottom of the Facebook stack (think of it as Facebook’s version of Chubby). We hit production with a 3-person team in less than a year; and subsequently scaled the team to 30+ engineers spanning multiple sub-teams. In the four years that I led the team (until Spring 2021), we did not experience a single severe outage (nothing higher than a SEV3). The Delos design is well-documented in two academic papers (in OSDI 2020 and SOSP 2021). Delos is currently replacing all uses of ZooKeeper at Facebook.
Most innovation managers know that few of their initiatives will succeed, so they keep multiple projects running at the same time and create processes for quickly separating winners from losers. One popular way to make decisions about what stays and what goes is the use of stage gates. Yet, even with stage gates, firms struggle to kill bad projects. The authors undertook a decade-long review of the product development portfolio at former handset maker Sony Ericsson. They found that that the conventional use of stage gates can actually be part of the problem, impeding project discontinuation in counterintuitive ways.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of Choose Boring Technology. If you’re not, I’ll wait for you to read the excellent blog post by…
Choose the ideal project management methodology. Discover the difference between agile, scrum, and kanban for project management.
It’s common for companies to hang on for too long to projects or parts of the business that are underperforming. Two effective techniques can help executives make project investment decisions on when to hold on to an asset and when to let it go.
I am a firm believer that success starts with the statement of work (SOW). An appropriate and attainable SOW determines whether my team of UX designers and researchers get the time and activities we require to fully understand a client’s needs and fashion a suitable solution. Regrettably, we often work within overly prescriptive SOWs that dictate a solution before we have a chance to understand the problem. One reason projects are poorly scoped is our clients’ discomfort with ambiguity. Clients
Project management software comparison websites list about 600 different project management tools and choosing the right one can be head-spinning. We provide a list of 6 essential Project Management tools and insights on which types of projects they are most suited for.