Milestones

Miles Davis had an album called MilesTones. I always thought that was pretty cool.

We finally hit our first major milestone at work yesterday - the M1 milestone was based around getting an established codebase and tools completed - test and communications plans and a production environment along with processes for promotion.

Here's me thinking that the development methodology we're using is all fancy pants and unique, (and that maybe one day I could write a book about it and retire to Barbados), when some irritating JoS Poster mentioned something called SCRUM. SCRUM is pretty much the development methodology we're following on Project Tremble. We've got all the good bits of XP, the good bits from MSF, and none of the silliness. We're having daily 10 minute meetings instead of a weekly breifing. We're pretty much answering the three SCRUM questions daily (although not so formally).

The thing that really doesn't sit quite well with me about these agile methodologies, is that they are so hard to schedule. You just bite off a chunk, get cracking, and there's an overwhelming (well, maybe just whelming) sense of "It'll be done when it's finished." Given that you always seem to end up with a fixed ship date, when it comes time to ship, right now I'm not entirely sure exactly what will be ready...

Ahh the good old days. When you could write a schedule that nobody believed except for you and then carry on about slips and overtime. Now I have to share the same levels of fear as everybody else...

Cam pointed me at 43 things. A lot of those new web community ideas make me want to puke, but this one is strangely endearing. What is it you want to do? Just add one goal, and I bet you'll add twenty. I did.