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Smart Software Development on Impossible Schedules
Andrew Stellman writes "Jennifer Greene and I have an article in the new issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal called "Quick-Kill Project Management: How to do smart software development even when facing impossible schedules." We got a lot of great feedback from our last article on open source development, but there were a bunch of people who wanted to know whether it was really feasible to do planning and reviews on a tight schedule. That's a fair question, and this article is meant to be an answer to it. We pulled out bare-bones project management practices that will help you protect your project from the most common and serious problems, and gave instructions and advice for implementing them that should work in a real-life, high-pressure programming situation."
Less clicking.
The Army reading list
For some reason "Impossible Schedule" in software development means cutting corners instead of increasing manpower.
Because that's all you can do (in general). Adding man-power to a late software project only makes it later, as was shown by Brooks some 30 years ago.
Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules
by Steve C. McConnell
I'm in no way related to it, I just own it and I think every project director should have one. It contains a lot of ideas and hands-on tips you can immediately try on the field. The last section, named Best Practise, is a practical reference guide. There is also a chapter if you already are in a crazy project and want to rescue it.
I was in this position twice, in succession.
In the first case, my company tried to break into the professional market (we were big in the education market) so we announced a major overhaul and several new new features. It was a fantastic vision but unfortunately the president made the mistake of announcing the full feature set and that we would start accepting purchase orders that summer. By the time spring rolled around it was clear that were were going to miss the deadline by several months (very bad when most of your sales are in September), but since the feature set was set in stone, we couldn't cut features. The writing was on the wall but we accepted it and started working 13 hour days nonstop for 6 months. Customer complaints over late orders flooded our phone lines and prevented our previous customers from calling tech support, so our old customers felt neglected and our new ones started cancelling orders. We gave up in christmas and released the complete but buggy product and got more complaints.
The president was replaced, and under his leadership we were able to finish the product we wanted to finish within a reasonable schedule. Depite all the doom and gloom earlier, we survived. Unfortunately, we lost the senior software engineer and another developer in the process.
Then, president hired a vice president which wanted to revamp the whole product and move it to an even higher market. I gave a detailed estimate that said it would take 2 years. The VP said we'd go bankrupt if we didn't release in 9 months. I repartitioned the estimate and said that we could do it in two stages, each 13 months long or three releases each 9.5 months long. No go. It had to all be done in one release, and that release could take no longer than 9 months or we might as well close up shop. I came close to losing my job over the issue, but since I was the most senior programmer there with the most experience about the product, the new senior software engineer told the VP if I went he'd have to give up too. 2 years later, after a complete turn over of the team twice (including the new senior programmer), the product was finally release It had more bugs than we'd like, but it was recieved well by the market so it was "good enough". At release time, I was the last person standing from the original team, but I had enough and left soon after. The product was well received but since the team was new, a new version of the product wasn't released into three years later.
All the VP's threats didn't change an impossible schedule. You can't squeeze 2 years of work in 9 months, not matter how you try to force it. If you try, the most you can do is destroy your team and lose sales in the process. Most of those doom and gloom professies don't pan out. If they *are* true, someone is running the company wrong and development schedules are the least of your problems.
In the later case, had the VP chosen either a more reasonable schedule (like any of the 3 I laid out above), we would have had most if not all of our original team at the end and been able to do subsequent releases at the same measured pace. We would have had regular sales and the company would have prospers much more.
Being a software architect or project manager is hard, but ultimately, the best ones just lay out out all the credible options on the line and stick to their guns, even if it means risking your job. My experience in that job showed me that you can do it even in a hostile environment. If you lay things out properly and tell the truth, you may be resented, but you will be respected, even by those who chose to ignore your advice.