Wednesday, January 03, 2007
New Year, New Calendar
In planning our iteration's work at the beginning of this week, we used something simple but effective to focus on how many people were available, and who could work on what when. We drew up a simple calendar on a whiteboard showing when each person would be on holiday, and when people would be out of the office (at client meetings etc).
The effect that this had was that we were clearly able to think about estimating and committing to work suitable for the people available. For example, we can see that Raymond is not back from his Christmas break until Thursday. There were some tasks that he has the most relevant skills for, so our customer agreed that we should move these to next week, instead prioritising things that Kylie could start on, and pair with Raymond when he gets back. The graphical representation gave us something that clearly showed our resource constraints, and it clearly provided a basis for prioritisation that was easily accessible to the customer.
It was also easy for us to see how many person days we had available, and to know when the amount of work planned for the week was more than we could commit to. We also used the calendar to record release dates and other pieces of work that need to be done on fixed days. I like the simplicity and the focus that the calendar brings. I think we'll be keeping it.
The effect that this had was that we were clearly able to think about estimating and committing to work suitable for the people available. For example, we can see that Raymond is not back from his Christmas break until Thursday. There were some tasks that he has the most relevant skills for, so our customer agreed that we should move these to next week, instead prioritising things that Kylie could start on, and pair with Raymond when he gets back. The graphical representation gave us something that clearly showed our resource constraints, and it clearly provided a basis for prioritisation that was easily accessible to the customer.
It was also easy for us to see how many person days we had available, and to know when the amount of work planned for the week was more than we could commit to. We also used the calendar to record release dates and other pieces of work that need to be done on fixed days. I like the simplicity and the focus that the calendar brings. I think we'll be keeping it.
