tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-684183198890094283.post4259412540341771954..comments2023-11-05T06:12:59.718-05:00Comments on S.Lott-Software Architect: How to Estimate a ProjectS.Lotthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06337323642834330176noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-684183198890094283.post-83289596781448471472022-02-16T03:35:34.584-05:002022-02-16T03:35:34.584-05:00Speaking of Agile software development life cycle,...Speaking of Agile software development life cycle, here is a really useful <a href="https://www.cleveroad.com/blog/agile-sdlc" rel="nofollow">article</a> about this.Marynahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07456102335100650467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-684183198890094283.post-30639856754900316502013-06-27T17:51:12.435-04:002013-06-27T17:51:12.435-04:00I disagree with your assertion that Scrum means th...I disagree with your assertion that Scrum means the "Formal Scrum-fall" version of waterfall. I don't know how I can make this more clear without adding absurd statements. Why did you assert that I was talking about a rigid, formal, useless version of Scrum? What could I have said differently to alert you?S.Lotthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06337323642834330176noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-684183198890094283.post-24041423492881209652013-06-27T16:07:28.305-04:002013-06-27T16:07:28.305-04:00You're conflating a lack of premature analysis...You're conflating a lack of premature analysis (good) with Scrum (not so good).<br /><br />The first thing you do in Scrum is try to estimate how long tasks will take you and how many you can take in for the next sprint (i.e. the planning meeting). In my experience in the software industry, which is extensive, these meetings tend to end in failure and frustration for precisely the reasons you outlined above - no one can accurately estimate the sprint beforehand.<br /><br />A good Scrum team will move on and say "we don't know yet, let's just get started and do everything we can in that time period", and basically end the first planning meeting right there. Of course, at that point, they're not using Scrum anymore. A bad one will waste up to 2 hours in the planning meeting jumping wildly at estimates, then will run into problems 3/4 of the way into the sprint: either they'll feel depressed because they can't get all of it done or they'll run out of work and start twiddling their thumbs. If you're lucky, they'll rush something with a bunch of "temporary hacks" out the door so they can say they delivered something, as there is a dire incentive to release. Next sprint, the product owner will give them more work and those "temporary" hacks will become permanent. And the whole cycle will repeat again and again.<br /><br />This process killed one of the companies that I worked at, and they had a very good development team.<br /><br />The spirit of getting something done before trying to budget is correct - I just don't think your vision of using formal "Agile" methods will get you there. I've seen a lot of places implement Scrum - the most successful ones were the ones who removed process liberally. Just "ship early, ship often" and you can make do without tons of bureaucracy.<br /><br />In fact, you'll find that a good team functions best with less process rather than more. Good teams self-organize to a much greater extent, and bureaucracy just gets in their way of doing that. We used something very close to waterfall at Google, and the people there were such mature developers that it worked brilliantly. Scrum would have just slowed us down.<br /><br />If you want the insight without the issues of a synchronous process, use Kanban. Continuous flow processes are much friendlier to developers and don't require excessive analysis to get started.Michael Barnathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15084001947733154333noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-684183198890094283.post-87767109779959747762013-06-27T08:04:13.514-04:002013-06-27T08:04:13.514-04:00Wonderful post. Love it.Wonderful post. Love it.Rick Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07007621082678493913noreply@blogger.com