90 Syndrome Software Project Management
— Tom Cargill, This adds up to 180% in a wry allusion to the notoriety of software development projects significantly over-running their schedules (see ). It expresses both the rough allocation of time to easy and hard portions of a programming project and the cause of the lateness of many projects as failure to anticipate the hard parts. In other words, it takes both more time and more coding than expected to make a project work. The rule is attributed to Tom Cargill of and was made popular by September 1985 'Programming Pearls' column in, in which it was titled the 'Rule of Credibility'. In some, this rule also surfaces when a task is portrayed as 'relatively done'. This indicates a common scenario where planned work is completed but cannot be signed off, pending a final activity which may not occur for a substantial amount of time.
See also. – the 80/20 rule. References.
Feature Article: 90% Done Is Not Almost Done Back when I was a new developer, my boss asked me how long it would take to complete a specific task. I looked at it for about 20 seconds, and said “Four weeks.” “Great,” he said.
At the end of the first week, I was 25% done—that’s what I reported on my status report. At the end of the second week, I was 50% done. At the end of the third week, I was 75% done.
At the end of the fourth week, I was 90% done. At the end of the fifth week, I was 92% done. At the end of the sixth week, when I reported I was 92.5% done, my manager finally took pity on me. “Johanna, do you know when you will be done?” “Nope. Not a clue.” “Would you like a little help learning how to know when you’ll be done?” “You bet!” My manager knew that 90%, 92%, and especially 92.5% done was not anywhere near done. Rather, it was a good clue that I had no idea when I would be done. I’d run smack dab into the 90% Done syndrome.
My manager sat me down and asked me questions that helped me break the large tasks into many smaller tasks. Like most people, I’m good at estimating smaller tasks and not so good at estimating larger tasks. Then, I listed all the test cases I would have to check, to know if this code was done. I didn’t call them test cases back then; I called them “done criteria.” My boss and I both knew that once I’d finished the tasks and made sure my code met the “done criteria,” I would actually be done. That work took me almost ten weeks to complete.
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Luckily, I had an understanding manager who helped me plan and test my way out of the 90% Done syndrome. Here are actions you can take, whether you are the one stuck in 90% Done or the manager of a person stuck in 90% Done:.
List everything you need to do, to finish the big chunk of work. I include any infrastructure work such as setting up branches in the source control system.
Estimate each item on that list. This initial estimate will help you see how long it might take to complete the entire task. Now, look to see how long each item on that list will take to finish. If you have a task longer than one day, break that task into smaller pieces. Breaking larger tasks into these inch-pebbles is critical for escaping the 90% Done syndrome. Determine a way to show visible status to anyone who’s interested.
If you’re the person doing the work, what would you have to do to show your status to your manager? If you’re the manager, what do you need to see? You might need to see lists of test cases or a demo or something else that shows you visible progress.
Since you’ve got one-day or smaller tasks, you can track your progress daily. I like to keep a chart or list of the tasks, my initial estimated end time and the actual end time for each task. This is especially important for you managers, so you can see if the person is being interrupted and therefore is multitasking. (See the article about the Split Focus schedule game.) Sometimes, people fall into 90% Done because they’re implementing across the architecture, writing all the GUI or writing all of one layer at a time.
If you shift people to implementing by feature and have them work in short iterations, they start trying to estimate and complete smaller chunks of work. Their estimates will be more accurate, and they are more likely to finish the work. Public Project Management Workshop, Sept 22-24, 2008.
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Want to learn more approaches to avoid and solve Split Focus and other schedule games? I’m offering a public Sept. 22-24, 2008 in Waltham, MA.
90 Syndrome Software Project Management
If you’d like to learn ways to start a project, steer it to success, and complete it successfully, consider participating in the workshop. See thedescription to see what experiential project management training looks like and for the registration page. Telecharger wakfu saison 2 torrent fr. Expect to work hard and have fun! Please do contact me if you have questions. I’ve Joined the Ranks of the Podcasters.