Re: Practice: Slack

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 22:33:23 -0500, Russell Gold 
<russgold-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 20:44:03 -0500, Ron Jeffries
> <ronjeffries-hPI1FfVg2TpDlFalPvvQyA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > [...] I think this relates back
> > to Kent's comments on accountability: it's really not OK to commit
> > to something and deliver nothing.
> 
> No, it's really not OK - but what if it happens? Presumably with a
> too-short iteration, it is possible that all of the tasks really did
> need more time than was available. So, scolding and recriminations
> aside, what DO you do in that case? 

It's rare, but it does happen. We'd look at why, and consider how to
make stories and tasks smaller. We seem to be more prone to forgetting
tasks than just estimating wildly wrong on the tasks that we thought
of, so we may make it a point to discuss stories more.

But the subtext to the customer is, "We predicted this and it didn't
happen - so our predictions are suspect. We know we didn't complete
anything, but please let us tackle one story for this coming week."

(And that's not so different from the case where we finish an
iteration's stories, and go back for another one. The trick is that
we've moved into "one story at a time".)

> Surely you cannot use "yesterday's
> weather" to predict that you will not accomplish anything in the next
> iteration, can you?
Well... it works quite nicely. What's to say our estimates aren't off
by a factor of 3 or 4 or 10 - why should it have been two? (If you
want to assume we'll finish those leftovers in the upcoming
iteration.)

I haven't had a team finish no stories two iterations in a row. But if
I did, that'd be powerful information for the customer to be aware of,
and powerful feedback for the team.

-- 
   Bill Wake  William.Wake-HInyCGIudOg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  www.xp123.com


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