If you’re always late, a faster car won’t help

Posted by Robert Merrill on March 2, 2010 under Estimation, Project Set-Up, Software-Intensive Businesses | Be the First to Comment

Q: Why were they late for the meeting?

A: They didn’t leave soon enough.

But…they got stopped by a train, and they remembered that they needed to pick up a loaf of bread, and…they have a slow car!

Details like speed limits and the police aside, what do the car, and the bread, and the train have to do with it? The trip took 25 minutes, five of it spent waiting for the train, and five of it in the convenience store, and fifteen of it driving. They left 20 minutes before the meeting, and they were five minutes late.

Well, they didn’t plan on the train or the bread.

Do they ever plan on the train or the bread?

On the train, kind of. On the bread, no.

Yet they’re nearly always late. Their software projects are, too.

But…they weren’t as productive as they thought, and Terri was ill, and they had this big interruption, and…

So they get a faster car.

Soon (if not before the first trip), they’ll factor the faster car into their decision about when to leave, they’ll still leave “at the last minute,” they’ll still make unplanned but important stops, and they’ll still be chronically late.

And, they’ll factor in the productivity gains of new languages and new tools and rockstar programmers and…

Q. Why are their software projects chronically late? (or always seem to turn into death marches—the project management equivalent of speeding, and fines, and points, and suspended licenses)

A. Their schedules are consistently too “aggressive” (or “absurd” if we want to be blunt about it).

Dude, it’s not about the car.