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Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene have an article in the June 30th Dr. Dobb’s Journal on a topic they call “Quick-kill” project management. This is a technique they have distilled for managing projects on impossible schedules. I think “distilled” is the right word here, since the three components of the process, vision/scope definition, work structure breakdown, and code reviews are certainly not new. The authors of O’Reilly’s “Applied Software Management” are well-qualified to advise on the topic of managing to ridiculous timelines, but I do have one or two quibbles with their recommendations.

My biggest issue stems from the tactical nature of their approach to handling high-pressure development scenarios. I don’t have any problem with the constraints on their artificial example, i.e. finish the project to management’s timeline or lose your job. We can agree that a higher level strategic approach of trying to educate management falls outside the traditional boundaries of “project management” and is something that should occur at stakeholder level earlier in the game. However, let’s put this whole thing in proper perspective. We can start by throwing out the latter two steps of their process. Work structure breakdown (what I would have called functional decomposition and module design) and code reviews are entirely tactical efforts. The authors are right that, in the presence of relatively decent requirements, decomposition can be done in a few hours. Code reviews are also a good thing. Neither, though, have much to do with the basic problem. Continue Reading »