[thelist] Fulltime to freelance

[Martin Burns]

On 29 Nov 2008, at 18:48, Matt Warden wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Martin Burns wrote:
>> Often the other way round: cost and schedule are fixed, but scope
>> varies.
>>
>> Or, to put it another way: we'll get as much done as we can from the
>> prioritised list - the more in-flight change involved, the more  
>> likely
>> low-priorities are to drop off the end.
>
> Makes sense, but I still have a hard time reconciling that with how a
> large project would work.
>  it's difficult to see a way that such a high amount of change
> would result in anything workable in the end.

My largest project (currently occupying 16 people within a much larger  
programme) seems to be handling it quite well, delivering in a set of  
iterations which are evolving functional components to keep up with  
emerging requirements. But I'm not at all convinced that the programme  
has a defined total scope, even at a high level, while it's under  
pretty firm limits to stop at the end of March.

This is actually a real interesting topic to me right now, as the  
current client's flavour of the month is "we must do this project in  
an Agile fashion" without stopping to think
a) what do they mean by Agile?
b) what's the logic for choosing which project are better suited to  
Agile delivery?
c) does a project need to have *all* of it being Agile, or just some  
workstreams?

So I'm trying to work this out in my own mind, as a prelim to  
discussing with client.

If I get time (and I've got 2 weeks off over Xmas, so why not?) I may  
write some of this up as an article.

> In fact, some of the scope mgmt I do is more to keep the client from
> inadvertently tanking their own project than anything else...


Oh believe me, I hear ya!

Cheers
Martin

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