Planning #
- We started by discussing Agile methods, which are a way to avoid over-planning.
- But under-planning is also a problem.
So how do we plan without planning?
Goals
- Identify goals.
- Once we have goals, we can identify intermediate goals that we’ll clearly need to accomplish to get there.
Deadlines
- Agile strategy looks like it completely avoids deadlines. You just see what you can get done and try to maximize velocity.
- But sometimes there are deadlines.
So:
- So goals have associated deadlines.
- You try to figure out if you’re on track.
- When it’s clear you can’t accomplish the goal on time, or like you’ll have extra time to hit stretch goals, you adjust the goals to match the time budget.
Example #
E-Commerce
We want to build an e-commerce site.
Goal: Build a working e-commerce site.
What parts does an e-commerce site have?
- Product pages (view, manage)
- Shopping cart
- Checkout
- Bill
- Ship
Now we can:
- Expand
- Set deadline
- Contract
Grange #
- We’ve got a deadline: About December 1st.
- We want a finished game.
- What does that mean?
- Can we come up with intermediate goals/deadlines?
- Now we need to figure out what people are doing next week.
