When I ask countless people what is iterative development, people always throw a disdainful look: "Iterative development! This is not clear? It is to develop in an iterative way, and the development process adopts the way of continuous integration. ." But when I asked in detail how to carry out development, and even talked about how to formulate plans, as well as how to analyze and organize before planning, people were surprised and confused: "Ah! Iterative development is so complicated?
" In development practice and research, workload assessment is often the most troublesome and difficult problem. When people confidently decide to try iterative development, the workload assessment is a daunting task for many. Is workload evaluation really that hard? How should we evaluate it?
Undoubtedly, the first step in a workload assessment should be work breakdown. The whole system is divided into several modules, each module is divided into several functions, and each function is divided into multiple tasks. Break down the work item by item until you are sure that each work is properly evaluated. A job that lasts more than 10 days cannot be accurately assessed, so it should be broken down until it is broken down into smaller pieces of work within 2-3 days. After the work is decomposed, the workload of merging each work is the workload of a function; the workload of merging each function is the workload of a module; the workload of merging each module is the workload of the entire system .
However, even if the workload is properly decomposed, the workload assessment for the same job is different due to the different understanding of requirements, different design methods, and different technical proficiency. Therefore, to objectively assess the workload, it should be done by multiple people, not by one person.
First, the decomposed tasks are listed in a table by module and function, and the business requirements and tasks of each task are described in turn, so that everyone involved in the assessment can clearly understand each task. Then assign workload assessments to multiple people, ensuring that each job has 2-3 people evaluating at the same time.
The assessment at this stage should be independent, that is, the results of each person's assessment will not affect the other person. After everyone has completed their own assessment, the project manager collects everyone's assessment results and organizes a meeting for discussion.
In the workload assessment workshop, the meeting organizer will discuss each job one by one. For a certain job, if the difference in the workload assessed by everyone involved in the assessment is not large, it means that there is not much difference between everyone on the job, and the most suitable workload assessment is selected; Great, listen carefully to his opinion. Maybe he misunderstood a detail of the work, or maybe that detail is where the needs are unclear. Stop evaluating the job and contact the client to clarify needs before continuing with the evaluation.
In fact, workload evaluation is also an iterative process: customers put forward requirements, evaluate workload, find places where requirements are not clear, confirm with customers, and re-evaluate... After several rounds, not only workload evaluation, but also business requirements can be determined. gradually become clear.
In addition, each iterative period of iterative development should include requirements analysis, design, development, and testing. Therefore, it should be fully considered in the workload assessment, not just development.
Finally, when all the work has been assessed, is it time to submit the client? A mature project manager should think more. Not everyone can work at full capacity all the time, and illness, unexpected assignments, and personnel changes can affect project progress. Therefore, appropriately adding a spare time factor to each job to provide some slack time can ensure that the project process is more robust.
Reprinted from: http://fangang.iteye.com/blog/1185132