Scrum, Plans, Slack and Contracts (via Wegner's Lemma)
Today I have a question for Josh Milane, author of the MIT Technical blog.Josh,
(I wish I could post comments to your blog. I really do. Somehow I have to log in and my existing wordpress account won’t do the job… I guess we have to communicate the old fashioned way; via trackbacks and RSS feeds.)
Anyway,
Thanks for another interesting post on your always entertaining blog. I did have better things to do, you know than start browsing Wikipedia and associated links and learn more about maths and philosophy. No bad thing usually, but I have deadlines I am supposed to be focusing on.
Anyway, some comments for you.
1.
I agree with you that slack, while a very useful thing on software projects has a significant brand problem. So do synonyms like contingency which says ‘we aren’t sure, even though we are experts.’
2.
What can we do about managing uncertainty beyond padding a schedule and budget with slack time? Call upon Wegner’s lemma I hear you say.
But that creates its own challenges which you only partly address in your post. Sure, of course you want a collaborative approach with your development partners, but often the client wants certainty, and is driven not by the desire to do best, but by a fear of doing badly.
(You might find a recent article by our blogger friend Bas de Baar interesting. It addresses this last point at in his recent post about reputations.)
3.
Is your model of contracting systems simply a new term for time and materials (aka ‘cost plus’) contracts?
As always, a pleasure to read your informative blog.
Regards always
Craig
0 comments:
Post a Comment