-
When IT Is Your Company’s “Piggy Bank”
February 10, 2012
-
4 Key Things a Project Manager Must Do
February 10, 2012
-
Essential Project Management
February 10, 2012
-
8 Traits of Top Project Managers - Part 1
February 9, 2012
-
Agile Project Management - Engaging Your Customer!
February 9, 2012
-
9 Tips to Avoid Traps in Project Planning
February 9, 2012
-
Why Projects Succeed - Executive Sponsorship
February 8, 2012
-
On Customer Participation in Agile Projects
February 8, 2012
-
A Project Charter for Lazy Teams
February 8, 2012
-
The Power of Process: How Bad Project Management Kills Great Ideas
February 7, 2012
Schedule Game #2: 90% Done
August 22, 2007 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Scheduling
Schedule Game #2: 90% Done (#2 in the series Schedule Game)
By Johanna Rothman
I was a fortunate young developer. In my first three months at work, I ran into the 90% done schedule game. I did it to myself.
I estimated a particular task was going to take 6 weeks. Of course, being an arrogant and naive developer, it never occurred to me to break the task down into inch-pebbles. (That would have told me whether I even knew what to do for the task.)
At the end of the first week, I was 20% done. At the end of the second week, I was 40% done. At the end of the third week I was 60% done. At the end of the fourth week, I was 80% done. Right on time, at the end of the fifth week, I was 90% done. At the end of the sixth week, I was 92% done. Seventh week, 93% done. Time and I both marched onward. At the end of the 10th week, I was 97% done. But this time, I actually believed I was within a week of being done — I only had three one-day tasks left to complete. It took me two more weeks. A total of 12 weeks for a 6 week task.
During the time I was 92%, 93%, 94% done, I wrote status reports to my manager, explaining I’d run into unanticipated problems and that I hadn’t estimated all the things I needed to do. He was lovely about it, and kept saying, “Ok, let me know your updated estimate.”
At the end of this task, when I was finally done, he was all set to move on. I told him I would be estimating differently from now on, with much more detail, and several deliverables each week. If I couldn’t give him a date to be done, was that ok with him. We talked and I agreed to supply a date with a risk factor with each estimate.
I wish I could tell you I became a perfect estimator then. I didn’t. I’m still learning to estimate. But I now know that when I think I’m 90% done, I’m probably only 50% done.
I’m not the only one. The 90% done schedule game can occur under any conditions: reasonable or unreasonable schedule, low or high risk technology. 90% done is about our ability to predict the future, to perform accurate estimation, and to understand — in advance — if we will be interrupted. Not a trivial problem.
The 90% done schedule game is the reason I like feedback during project work, in the form of inch pebble estimation, one-on-one meetings with managers, visible project status, and project-wide rolling wave planning.
Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.
Related Articles
No comments yet.
feel free to leave a comment
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All fields marked with " * " are required.
- Agile Project Management
- Ask the Hut
- Certification
- Change Management
- Communications Management
- Computer Based Information Systems
- Concepts
- Corporate Transformation
- Cost Management
- Critical Chain Project Management
- Delegation
- History
- HR Management
- Implementing Project Management
- Integration Management
- Lessons Learned
- Management
- Miscellaneous
- People Issues
- PMBOK
- PRINCE2
- Procurement Management
- Program Management
- Project Lifecycle Phases
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management as a Career
- Project Management Best Practices
- Project Management Charts
- Project Management Definitions
- Project Management Ethics
- Project Management for Beginners
- Project Management Guides
- Project Management Musings
- Project Management Office
- Project Management Proposals
- Project Management Templates
- Project Portfolio Management
- Project Workforce Management
- Quality Management
- Requirements Management
- Risk Management
- Scheduling
- Scope Management
- SCRUM
- Soft Management
- Time Management
- Training
- Uncategorized