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A comment on Why Development Teams Struggle to Deliver on Time, on Budget, or at All. Parent comment

Re:Why Development Teams Struggle to Deliver on Time, on Bud... by makmanalp on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @12:31PM (#17239337)
> you simply cannot know all the little details

This is the reason big design up front hasn't been the gold standard in planning. Most modern methodologies acknowledge that there'll be a lot of changing requirements and learning-while-building.

The point is, given this information, you could a) run around like crazy doing all manner of reckless and crazy cowboy programming and putting out fires b) carefully plan a relatively short period of time on a small, achievable, well defined goal (not "build the project"), then making a note of what worked and what didn't, and readjust before you plan the next short period of time

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Re:Why Development Teams Struggle to Deliver on Time, on Bud... by Retric on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @12:42PM (#17239457)
This is often taken to an unhealthy extreme.

You need to have some fairly specific goal in mind to start doing anything. AKA are we building a PS4 game or a self driving car?

Methodologies like Scrum are all about transitioning a long term objective into short term progress. But, you really do need some fairly well thought out goal.

Further course corrections quickly get very expensive. Sort of like sailing from Virginia to Europe then deciding 1/4 of the way in on France then changing your mind to Spain at the midway point is probably fine. However, changing your mind to Australia is a much bigger deal.

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Re:Why Development Teams Struggle to Deliver on Time, on Bud... by makmanalp on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @02:23PM (#17240571)
Agreed! Nothing I disagree with here. But last minute itinerary changes from France to Australia back to France again point to a larger, more systematic problems IMHO. Perhaps it's a lack of understanding of the market and customers, or just bad management and lack of company vision - but no software process is going to fix that.
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Re:Why Development Teams Struggle to Deliver on Time, on Bud... by AstralStorm on Tuesday June 05, 2018 @05:02PM (#17242019)
And then a poor maintenance programmer is faced will lack of architecture because the thing was built without any in mind... Just as a perpetual prototype.
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