“The only way to increase product quality and reduce cost while concurrently improving product development speed is to fundamentally change the development process itself.”
Christopher Meyer 1
This article discusses how, in software development, metrics can provide managers some assurance that the development can be conducted within bounds of cost, schedule, and reliability.
This article discusses how projects can now be estimated and bid with reasonable precision, allowing for a fact-based position in negotiations.
“That phrase, time boxing, has a fine manly ring to it,” the vice president said, grinning broadly. “I like it.”
“What does it mean to you,” we inquired.
“First you box in the development time you allow a project to have,” he answered.
“No more shilly-shallying around. You draw a box on the time line, like this (Figure 1). The project people know they have to deliver at the end of the box.”
Hidden Rule #1: “We can’t make sensible business decisions with such wide unknowns,” upper managers say.
From Tom DeMarco, Why Does Software Cost So Much?, Dorset House Publishing, 1995, 237 pages.
“The current model leads us to the conclusion that the limiting factor is the rate at which ideas or insights can be generated, and that the rate is not widely affected, if at all, by the number of men on the job, but rather by some capability level of the group.” Peter V. Norden 1
No software system of any realistic size is ever completely debugged—that is, error free
Edward Yourdon and Larry L. Constantine, 1975 1
What is the minimum of control that will maintain the process? Peter F. Drucker 1