Robert presenting at HTHH Pecha Kucha on Thursday 11/18

Posted by Robert Merrill on November 14, 2010 under Agile Methods, Waterfall (SDLC) | Be the First to Comment

I’m speaking at the High-Tech Happy Hour’s Pecha Kucha this Thursday the 18th sometime between 3:00 PM and 4:30 PM.

“A Tale of Two Processes” shows what happens to a hypothetical twelve-feature, one-year project when run following first the waterfall SDLC and second an agile method, assuming that the estimate/commitment is too low by one-third. This will be a highly visual presentation of an article I published on the Wisconsin Technology Network back in February 2009.

What makes a Pecha Kucha fun for presenters and attendees alike is the run-and-gun format—20 slides, 20 seconds each (they’re on timed advance), no exceptions. Pecha Kucha enforces Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s advice to public speakers, “Be sincere, be brief, be seated.”

Thank you, WI BADD

Posted by Robert Merrill on October 6, 2010 under Agile Methods, Estimation, Project Set-Up, Waterfall (SDLC) | Be the First to Comment

Thank You to the three Wisconsin IIBA chapters who hosted the fourth annual WI BADD™ on Tuesday, 10/5/2010, and the firms that sponsored it. I met some new people and learned some new things, and I know that was a lot of work to put on.

Thanks also to the enthusiastic audience for my talk, “Room To Breathe: The Role of the BA in Shaping Early Project Expectations.” If you would like me to speak with your software sponsors or development group about the project target, estimation, and commitment problem, please contact me and we’ll set something up.

Several of you requested additional material on the estimation problem. Here are a few things:

• If Software Estimators Ran the National Hurricane Center (blog post)
• Software Sanity: Accurate Estimates and Other Myths (WTN, the Wisconsin Technology Network)
• A Tale of Two Processes (WTN, the Wisconsin Technology Network)
• If You’re Always Late, A Faster Car Won’t Help (blog post)

Thanks again, everybody at WI BADD™, for a great day. I hope to see you again on Tuesday, 10/11/11.

Deniability and Software–Ouch!

Posted by Robert Merrill on April 26, 2010 under Software-Intensive Businesses, Waterfall (SDLC) | Be the First to Comment

I’ve long told my customers that big waterfall software specs are more like insurance policies than blueprints, especially when I hear the phrase “sign-off” more than once a week. They are part of Covey the Younger’s Trust Tax.

But in Deniability, Seth Godin puts it better that I ever could. “At some point, that effort [anticipatory CYA] becomes so great you never actually ship anything, which of course is the very best protection against failure.”

Ouch!