Agile principles are all about learning as you go and using the new knowledge to redefine the goals of the project. This is perfect for the developers and the immediately involved business representatives. But for a C-level exec it becomes hard. Let us imagine that you and I are two C-level execs. I’m the CEO… Continue reading Agile and C-level Project Selection
Tag: Time Estimation
Professional Developers Estimate Times
Being a great coder is only part of the skills required to be a professional developer. A professional developer is never isolated with the code. All work is done within the context of a project. A professional developer delivers not only high quality code, but also high quality time estimates. Back in June I wrote… Continue reading Professional Developers Estimate Times
Developers held Accountable without Authority
With authority follows accountability. The other way around is also true. Anyone who’s held accountable has to have authority. Unfortunately it is far too common that developers are held accountable for a project, even though they don’t have any real authority. They typically are responsible for the delivery, but the authority stays on management level… Continue reading Developers held Accountable without Authority
Programmer Time Translation Table
An experienced project manager I used to work with claimed that he took the programmers’ time estimates, multiplied by pi and converted to the next time magnitude to get the true number. 1 day converts to 3.14 weeks. He had learned the hard way that programmers are bad at estimating times. To get a more… Continue reading Programmer Time Translation Table
Disarming Different Estimates with a Deck of Cards
Yesterday I got hold of a deck of cards, specially made for playing planning poker at sprint planning. I’ve been through many sprint plans before but never actually played planning poker with cards. I’m stunned by the difference it made. Without the cards, I’ve always been careful that everyone settles their own opinion first, before… Continue reading Disarming Different Estimates with a Deck of Cards