Comments on: Will Your Project Ship On Time?

By: Mike Nasca

Mike Nasca — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:23:20 +0000

Actually the final score should be -22-16+44-15+2+2+5 = -2. Only 3 pts for the software trainer under question 3, not 6 pts.

By: Mike Nasca

Mike Nasca — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:55:05 +0000

Graham and Hamid

It appears that this test only works if there are 0 non-developers on the team. That would contradict most other project assessment tools.

Question 1 states count everyone on the team. If your team only has developers on it, then you are saying there is no management, project management, testers or stakeholders on the team. That’s not a good thing for the project.

Including 1 project manager (10 pts), 2 testers (6 pts) and 2 stakeholders (6 pts) to questions 1 and 3 scores out this way – -16-10+38-15+2+2+5 = 6.

You’re also missing user training and training documentation (unless, of course, the software is so user friendly that it doesn’t need user training and/or training documentation). Adding 2 user document writers (6 pts) and 1 software trainer (6 pts) to questions 1 and 3 scores out this way – -22-16+47-15+2+2+5 = 1.

You need more than just developers to be on time and successful. I think the chart needs to score favorably for having a project manager, testers and training, and even higher for a good and excellent PMs and trainers.

By: Florian Potschka

Florian Potschka — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:40:44 +0000

What about breaking up question 5 (Organizational strictness on methodologies or processes) into more detail? E.g. I would ask whether a team uses source control and continuous integration, does code reviews, etc.

By: Graham Wade

Graham Wade — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:25:19 +0000

Hamid
According to your chart it’s (-2) for each developer which gives -6+0+16-15+2+2+5 = 4 => project will be late. Or have I misread something here.

Graham

By: Damon Wilder Carr

Damon Wilder Carr — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:28:28 +0000

if only this could ever work…..

Great book by the way (grin)

Damon Carr

By: Hamid Shojaee

Hamid Shojaee — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:53:01 +0000

Graham, I just did some math taking a staff of 3, all developers, 1 superstar (you need one for success) for a 12 month project, best practices, with a task list and estimates (yeses to Q 6 & 7) and I get a score of -2+0+16-15+2+2+5=8.

In this case, the score of 8 is heavily weighed down (as you pointed out) because of the 12-month project. I agree the -15 on that is too high for the 12 month range, but adequate when you get closer to 18 months. I’ll have to play with that question. I think the score should have been somewhere around 15 using the scenario I provided above, which would estimate the project would finish within 10-15% of scheduled time.

By: Graham Wade

Graham Wade — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:23:43 +0000

I think the -15 for a 12 month project is too large a negative number. I also feel that the rating for productivity is subjective, we employ good staff but they would all have to be superstars for us to get anywhere near a positive result let alone a “will ship on time” rating. We regularly undertake 12 month development contracts with 3-5 programmers per project and normally bring them in on time and within budget (always within the customer price). We use best of breed tools where applicable and everyone knows everything about the project (via PWA). I would say that the biggest driver has to be accuracy of estimating.

By: Will Your Project Ship On Time? : Keyvan Nayyeri

Will Your Project Ship On Time? : Keyvan Nayyeri — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 16:06:28 +0000

[...] one of his recent posts, Hamid has started a new thread by creating a short test that lets software development teams, their members and their leaders to [...]