Comments on: Fixed date projects: more advice from the experts

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 17:49:00 +0000

I interviewed Keith Richards about DSDM at the Agile conference last year. You can watch the video on my Gantthead blog, The Money Files.

By: David Whelbourn

David Whelbourn — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 21:10:00 +0000

Review DSDM for guidance on managing fixed date projects. This is achieved by using the scope tolerance and the MoSCoW prioritization (which comes from DSDM). I have managed several projects with fixed end dates and generally used MoSCoW to ensure they are successful.

Within Software projects generally if you are on time you will be on budget (because within these types of projects the bulk of the cost is people).

One of the most effective backed in project organizations I saw was exhibition organizers. They have a repeating script and work based on “weeks to show” i.e. 22 weeks to show these are the deliverables and activities I have to complete.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:09:52 +0000

Hello Craig
There are lots of ways to get the project to fit the time, and the points you have raised here are excellent. I think people forget sometimes that we project managers only deliver what other people want. If the stakeholders don’t want something, why would we deliver it? This conversation with stakeholders is at the heart of the scope/cost/schedule balance. Whatever is most important to them – hitting the date, the budget or having a fully-featured product – is the constraint we will work to, although in reality it is likely to be a mix of all of them. Tactical versus long term is a great approach to finding this balance, but the team then has to factor in a Phase 2 to replace the tactical solution with something that will be robust enough to last in the long term. And in my experience that doesn’t always happen, and project customers get stuck with the short term solution for longer than they would like. Another conversation with the sponsor to make sure this actually happens!

By: Craig Brown

Craig Brown — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:43:57 +0000

Hey Elizabeth

I find this discussion interesting *but*

At the top level the real challenge is finding the right scope, cost, schedule balance. Scope in this conversation includes quality. And we’ll put aside hiring more or better people for now as in many instacnes the ramp up in hiring new people or other constrants make this a difficult avenue to pursue. And besides, if the problem were simply the number of people working on the solution that can managed into the plan.

That leaves us with managing scope to fit the schedule.

And embedding quality into scope means you then have two options.

1. Work out which solution components can be abandonned or deferred.
2. Work out which solution components can be addressed with a tactical versus long term solution.

The first is fairly well know, and approaches like ranking requirements help work out where the real minumum capability threshold is.

The second requires a fairly in depth discussion with the solution designers, programmers and analysts on the team. Every part of a solution has the potential to be a sophiticated and re-useable peice or to be a short term tactical one that needs to be replaced in 12 months.

This second discussion requires substantial domain knowledge from both the technical and business value perspectives and is hard work. In my experience this is the best place to go to look for solutions to the constrained schedule.

By: oneplace (OnePlace)

oneplace (OnePlace) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:57:05 +0000

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