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If the features don’t fit, reprioritize
You’ve got 273 days of work for Milestone 1.0, and Orion’s Orbits want delivery in 90 days.
Don’t worry, this is pretty common. Customers usually want more than you can deliver, and it’s
your job to go back to them and reprioritize until you come up with a workable feature set.
To reprioritize your user stories for Milestone 1.0 with the customer...
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Q: What’s the difference between a
milestone and a version?
A:Not much. In fact you could call your
first milestone “Version 1” if you like. The
big difference between a milestone and a
version is that a milestone marks a point at
which you deliver signficant software and get
paid by your customer, whereas a version
is more of a simple descriptive term that is
used to identify a particular release of your
software.
The difference is really quite subtle, but the
simple way to understand it is that “Version”
is a label and doesn’t mean anything more,
whereas “Milestone” means you deliver
signficant functionality and you get paid. It
could be that Version 1.0 coincides with
Milestone 1.0, but equally Milestone 1.0
could be Version 0.1, 0.2 or any other label
you pick.
Q: So what exactly is my software’s
baseline functionality?
A: The baseline functionality of your
software is the smallest set of features that
it needs to have in order for it to be at all
useful to your customer and their users.
Think about a word processing application.
Its core functionality is to let you load, edit,
and save text to a file. Anything else is
beyond core functionality, no matter how
useful those features are. Without the ability
to load, edit, and save a document with text
in it, a word processor simply is not useful.
That’s the rule of thumb: If you can get
by without a feature, then it isn’t really
baseline functionality, and it’s probably a
good candidate for pushing out to a later
milestone than Milestone 1.0 if you don’t
have time to get everything done.
project planning
Cut out more FUNCTIONALITY
The very first thing you can look at doing to shorten the time to delivering Milestone 1.0 is to cut out
some functionality by removing user stories that are not absolutely crucial to the software working.
Once you explain the schedule, most customers will admit they
don’t really need everything they originally said they did.
Ship a milestone build as early as possible
Aim to deliver a significant milestone build of your software as early as possible. This keeps your
development momentum up by allowing you and your team to focus on a deadline that’s not too far off.
Focus on the BASELINE functionality
Milestone 1.0 is all about delivering just the functionality that is needed for a
working version of the software. Any features beyond that can be scheduled for later
milestones.
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Don’t let customers talk
you into longer development
cycles than you’re
comfortable with. The sooner
your deadline, the more
focused you and your team
can be on it.
Q: I’ve done the math and no matter
how I cut the user stories up, I just can’t
deliver what my customer wants when
they want me to. What can I do?
A: It’s time to confess, unfortunately. If
you really can’t build the software that is
required in the time that it’s needed by, and
your customer simply won’t budge when it
comes to removing some user stories from
the mix, then you might need to walk away
from the project and know that at least you
were honest with the customer.
Another option is to try to beef up your team
with new people to try and get more work
done quicker. However, adding new people
to the team will up the costs considerably,
and won’t necessarily get you all the
advantages that you’d think it might.
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