Predicting the Unpredictable

19. What You Can Do For Estimation

In But I Need to Know When the Project Will Be Done, I talked about what you can do for estimating an agile project (do a gross estimate of the backlog, estimate your velocity, better your estimate every iteration, and keep talking to your management). What if you have a contract? What if your managers really do need to know exactly when the project will be done? What if you don’t have an agile project?

Let’s take these one at a time. If you have a contract, that date is your release criterion. By definition, you will be done. What’s the problem? If you rank your product backlog, get to done at the end of each iteration, or make sure each feature is really done when it works its way off your board, what is ...