Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Planning

Work is "interesting" now, as we plan what the next major software release will be.  A dozen products that work together in a dozen different solutions, with 150 or 200 software engineers - making all this mesh is a lot like playing Tetris.



Tetris where you have a dozen different Product Managers each trying to hit the button that will slip a few more resources their way ...

Nothing else really hammers home the reality that is the "Iron Triangle": there are three and only three variables that you can use in your planning.  feature set, timetable, and budget/staff.  That's it.  You can play with them any way you like, but the Iron Triangle defines how much will happen and how long it will take.

And that's before we turn it over to management ...


I guess that if I didn't enjoy this, I wouldn't do it.  ;-)

5 comments:

Dave H said...

I guess that if I didn't enjoy this, I wouldn't do it.

I keep asking myself if I still enjoy it, and I keep saying "let me get back to you on that." I'm beginning to think I already know what the answer is. I'm just afraid to face it.

Old NFO said...

I'm with Dave on this one... sigh

RobertSlaughter said...

While somewhat like Tetris, it is very much more like James Earnest's (of Kill Doctor Lucky fame) The Big Cheese, a free print-and-play card game of project management.

RobertSlaughter said...

Dave/NFO: Agreed somewhat, and my short-term solution is to move from fast-paced corporate projects to slower but possibly more poorly-staffed and lower-budgeted public sector projects by changing jobs. Gimme a while to see if that actually helps any.

Longer-term solution? Winning the lottery.

Grapple said...

@ Robert S - won't help. Public sector projects do operate at "government speed," (glaciers move faster...) but the feature set never gets locked in, nor does the time/money budget get updated to accommodate all the "can we do this, too?" requests. All too often the initial release is ver 2.8, and it's still in beta.....