Here's the list of undesirable effects I came up with. I really probably only need 5-7, but I got carried away. Many of them a related.
Statement | Is it a complete sentence? | Does it exist? | Is it negative? | Do we care about it? |
10 Projects often miss their promised deadline. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
20 Projects often fail, late in the project, during the integration phase. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
30 The software produced contains many features that are never used (45%) , or rarely used (19%) [Johnson, 2003] | Y | Y | Y | N |
40 The software produced often misses many high-priority features that weren’t included in the original requirements specification. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
50 Projects often seem to spend 90% of their duration at 90% complete. Unpredictable | Y | Y | Y | Y |
60 Many requirements in the original requirements specification are de-scoped during the project. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
70 The change management process (i.e. where changes are assessed then approved or rejected) is time consuming. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
80 The relationships between various roles and staff is often stressful (e.g. between customer and developer). | Y | Y | Y | Y |
90 Cash flow from the project is delayed until the end of the project. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
100 Projects take too long to deliver. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
110 Many changes throughout the project are approved, causing rework. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
120 Many changes throughout the project are rejected, protecting the schedule but annoying the customer. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
130 Relationships between IT and their customer (“The business”) are poor. | Y | Y | Y | Y |
Jim took me through this list and together checked that each was a complete sentence, it existed, was negative and we cared about it.
Can I ask each of you to consider each entity and see if you agree with our assessment?
What is the question that you are trying to answer?
From what I have read so far, I am assuming that you are attempting to answer the following question: What is wrong with the waterfall approach to software development?
In other words why should we care about these UDE's?
Posted by: Michael Carroll | September 20, 2004 at 03:34 AM