Re: XP and estimating

Stefan,

"SS" == STEURS Stefan wrote:

 SS> This seems extremely tight to me. What if the problem space is not yet
 SS> understood.  

Create a hypothesis, test it, learn.  Continue until problem space is
understood. 

[...]

 SS> In your example the problem space is well defined.  You are automating
 SS> an existing business process.  I can understand in such cases the
 SS> problem definition is rather straightforward.  Imagine this case "In
 SS> the pan-European airspace there are military airspaces which are used
 SS> for training flights and patrol flights of the military.  These
 SS> airspaces are used on a planned basis and during these periods they
 SS> cannot be used by commercial aircraft.  We know that there is a
 SS> shortage on capacity in nearby airspaces which leads to excessive
 SS> delays for commercial flights in some periods and being able to use
 SS> the military airspace would increase the capacity.  We want to be able
 SS> to build a function into an existing system that allows to co-ordinate
 SS> the use of the military airspace to make use of that extra capacity to
 SS> reduce the delays."

 SS> Perhaps you think "this is trivial".  Well I can assure you it has
 SS> taken a long time to agree on what the problem space exactly is and
 SS> even longer to define the solution.  "Takes a few minutes" is not
 SS> something that you can apply here.  Also, it's damned difficult to
 SS> implement a partial solution.  Only an end-to-end solution that
 SS> involves the airlines, the air traffic controllers, the national
 SS> administrations that co-ordinate the airspace use/capacity, the data
 SS> providers and then some with the required "functionality" can lead to
 SS> added value.

 SS> The solution cannot exist without software.  There is no physical model
 SS> (like a bowling game) to implement.

Create software model of an airspace and try (XPish: spike) your ideas
there.

That's how we approach to embedded and industrial system development: we
have to develop software for a device (small or large) that don't exist
yet.

What we do is simple: write primitive software model of that device, that's
capable only to replay predefined scenarios and develop software on top of
this.

When actual hardware becomes available, test and integrade.  Don't forget
to modify the software model and accompanying scenarios.

I think that would help, esp. if you have a bunch of stakeholders that
hardly agree on software requirements.

-- 
Andrey V Khavryuchenko            http://www.kds.com.ua/
Silver Bullet Software Solutions  http://www.kds.com.ua/edu/

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