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Planning and Controlling Complex Projects

Planning and budgeting large projects is often based on trying to predict how development will turn out. Stories are estimated by the development team, but the budget for the whole project is independent from those estimates. Especially for complex projects this leads most often to (unwanted) surprises. Insights from beyond budgeting can help to increase flexibility, and focus on business value.

Jutta Eckstein
on Sep 02, 2013
Interview with Eduardo Miranda about Estimating and Planning Agile Projects

Eduardo Miranda, associate professor at the Master of Software Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon University explains the need for planning in agile projects, and describes various planning techniques that can be used with agile. He also looks on the impact of agile on project management offices and on the role of project managers in agile projects.

Ben Linders
on Jun 24, 2013
Evaluating Agile and Scrum with Other Software Methodologies

Historical data is a key resource for judging the effectiveness of software process improvement methods and also for calibrating software estimation accuracy. In this article, Capers Jones compares Agile and Scrum with a sample of contemporary software development methods using several standard metrics.

Capers Jones
on Mar 20, 2013
Metrics-Driven Development

In this article the author shares his thoughts and experience gathered while working together with DEV teams, trying to make sense of metrics. He introduces the practice of Metrics-Driven-Development: using metrics to drive the entire application development.

Mantas Klasavičius
on Nov 30, 2012
The Prioritization Divide: With Numbers or Without?

While there are many methods that use stories as a means for prioritizing development, there's a basic divide that asks whether it should be done with numbers or without. There are arguments on both sides, but instead of examining these, people tend to fall into one side naturally. Once there, they can become quickly entrenched in the belief that the other camp is foolishly mistaken.

Alex Adamopoulos Paul Dolman-Darrall
on Nov 19, 2012
Commitment – Writing a Graphic Novel explaining Real Options

Building on their work on Real Options, Chris Matts and Olav Maassen are writing a graphic novel to explain the concepts and share their knowledge in the area. They discussed the novel, the process of producing it and the crowdsourcing model of funding with Shane Hastie from InfoQ. A sample chapter is available for InfoQ readers to download.

Shane Hastie
on Apr 05, 2012
Building Scalability and Achieving Performance: A Virtual Panel

Join our industry-heavyweight (eBay, Betfair, FiveRuns and Twitter) panel as they explore the cost of making their sites as scalable as possible, whilst tuning to get the most performance they possibly can. They explore the pros-and-cons of making their apps as awesome as possible - all the while under the pressure of their business requirements.

James Cox
on Jul 22, 2008
Using Numbers to Communicate - in the Spirit of Agile

It's an old story. Techies cave in to the business guys because they don't know how to push back. The problem? Developers use numbers primarily for computation, but the business uses numbers to make decisions. In this story the "Spirit of Agile" encourages a developer to turn non-computational problems and issues into number language.

Linda Rising Barbara Chauvin
on Jun 13, 2008
AgileEVM: Measuring Cost Efficiency Across the Product Lifecycle

In this InfoQ article, Tamara Suleiman explains AgileEVM, an adaptation of traditional Earned Value Management (EVM) metrics, designed to fit a Scrum project management framework. Compatible with traditional EVM metrics, it allows both Agile and traditional projects to be tracked within a single program, giving important early warnings of trends across the entire product life cycle.

Tamara Sulaiman
on Oct 05, 2007
Visualizing Agile Projects using Kanban Boards

In the spirit of "information radiators and “big visible charts” Kenji Hiranabe proposes using Kanban Boards to organize three viewpoints (Time, Task, and Team) so the whole team understands the current status of the project and can work in an autonomous, motivated and collaborative manner.

Kenji Hiranabe
on Aug 27, 2007
Executive summary - An Adaptive Performance Management System

Traditional thinking has turned budgets into fixed performance contracts forcing managers at all levels to commit to specified financial outcomes, although many of the underlying variables are beyond their control. In this Cutter Executive Summary, Jim Highsmith offers an alternative for the adaptive organization: a project performance management system and a team performance management system.

Jim Highsmith
on Aug 09, 2006