If you don’t know what an estimate is, you can’t avoid using them. So here’s my attempt to define what is an estimate.The “estimates” that I’m concerned about are those that can easily (by omission, incompetence or malice) be turned into commitments. I believe Software Development is better seen as a discovery process (even simple …
I hear this a lot in the #NoEstimates discussion: you must estimate to know what you can deliver for a certain price, time or effort. Actually, you don’t. There’s a different way to look at your organization and your project. Organizations and projects have an inherent capacity, that capacity is a result of many different …
I’m coming out of the closet today. No, not that closet. Another closet, the tabu closet in the Agile community. Yes, I was (and to a point still am) a control freak, traditional, command and control project manager. Yes, that’s right you read it correctly. Here’s why this is important: in 2003 when I first …
Every time a software project is started, a dance starts: the dance of project approval. Decision makers and project delivery team take different positions at a table, some ask questions, others do their best to respond, given that these questions are typically about the future. Some of the questions are so much into the future …
One of the questions (Part I, Part II) that emerged from the #NoEstimatesQuestions discussion on twitter was: “How do I choose between options or opportunities (without having estimates regarding the cost)?” The thinking goes: I can spend some time doing A or B, but which should I do first? To answer this question we can …
