Last Updated: 27 Jun 2023
|
Differences
This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.
Both sides previous revision Previous revision Next revision | Previous revision | ||
processes:project-management-when-you-dont-know-what-you-are-building [Jan 7, 2012 04:43 AM] dordal |
processes:project-management-when-you-dont-know-what-you-are-building [Jun 27, 2023 04:49 AM] dordal old revision restored (Jun 24, 2023 02:02 AM) |
||
---|---|---|---|
Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
+ | = Project Management When You Don't Know What You're Building = | ||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | I won’t bore you with what happened, because your tax dollars produced [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | It’s a problem frequently faced by startups. You’ve got six customers, two of whom want to do something that you never dreamed your product would do. But they are paying you money. Maybe even A LOT of money. You need money to make things like the weekend company ski trip happen. Also things like payroll. So what now? | ||
+ | |||
+ | What you need is a good strategy for managing the changes, letting them happen but keeping your product plan on track. | ||
+ | |||
+ | So what is that? Here’s what’s worked well for me: | ||
+ | |||
+ | {{ : | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **Define short release cycles for your product.** The “we’ll-wait-five-years-between-releases” model of a certain Redmond software firm doesn’t work very well. If you’re a web startup, you might try the hyper-speed release schedule: every few weeks. [[http:// | ||
+ | |||
+ | * If you’re releasing every two weeks, you run the danger of always being the rat on a wheel. Working really hard and not getting anywhere. To counter this, **I usually like to write a vision document**. Use KISS on this one. \\ \\ Need to know how to write it? Why, I’ve got a [[: | ||
+ | |||
+ | * **So what DO you do for the requirements, | ||
+ | |||
+ | That’s it. There is no number four. I specifically don’t advocate adding a lot of layers to the management of the software project: don’t do change documents, risk analyses, and all those other things that ‘good’ software development requires. You’ll waste time thinking about them. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The key here is to have documentation, | ||
+ | |||
+ | As for the FAA? The good news is that they seemed to have learned some lessons. They’ve been deploying measurable technology upgrades for the last several years, such as the new [[http:// |