RE: Managing Extreme Programming

Glen

> [>] The traditional EV S-curve is viewed as an analog 
> (continuous) accumulation of value as a function of time. XP 
> projects provide a means of "digitizing" this in the form of 
> fine grained iterations. Emerging in the EV world is the 
> concept of "testable requirements." This could be considered 
> identical to UT's or FT's. Like these, TR's are booked at 0% 
> or 100%. By increasing the granularity "digital" versus 
> "analog" measures can be created - thus merging EV with Agile.

So Earned Value is the sum of the values of all user stories for which the
acceptance tests pass?

> The business and PM folks I support have no clue about the 
> terms used in XP. They live and breathe EV. For adoption to 
> take place we have to (and
> have) moved to their vocabulary NOT had them understand the 
> vocabulary of XP. At least that's how we've made progress.

That's reasonable, but we need a dictionary to translate between the two
languages--in both directions.

> > > (2) How to "digitize" the overall schedule (say 3 years 
> and $100M of 
> > > radar systems development of hardware, software a flight 
> platforms) 
> > > down to daily builds, and bi-weekly iterations and 
> monthly releases 
> > > of software for the project.
> > 
> > What does it mean to "'digitize' the overall schedule?"  Again, I
> don't
> > know
> > what this means.
> 
> [>] reduce the "progress to plan" measurements to a daily or 
> 3 day level. A typical "big" project might run for 3 years 
> and be 10's of millions in software alone. In the past this 
> was managed using EV on large grained boundaries (say 3 to 5 
> month milestones). We're reducing these to 3 day milestones 
> with "testable requirements," as the exit criteria for the 
> milestone, that when it passes accrues the "earned value" - 
> BCWP booked as value.

I still don't understand your meaning of "digitize."  Do you mean "convert
to numbers?"  Do you mean "convert to a set of booleans?"

Is it assumed that the cost of development is equal to the value of that
which is developed?

> [snip]

I'm starting to get into too many questions for one email.  I think I need
to take this list a little slower as I learn Earned Value.

> [>] In the majority of our work (to date) the customer is in 
> the form of a three ring binder, called the Functional Specification.

Sure.  And someone needs to really understand that document and make sure
that the development team is building the right thing.  And where there is
ambiguity in that document, someone needs to clear up that ambiguity and
make a decision.  That someone (or several someones) is the Customer.

> > > (6.1) How to dollarize the velocity units in terms the project 
> > > accounting folks will accept.
> > 
> > Lets see...  If x developers average y units per iteration, and the 
> > fully-loaded cost of those x developers is $z per 
> iteration, then the
> cost
> > per velocity unit is $z/y.  Not so difficult.
> 
> [>] Except this calculation I a level of effort and does not 
> describe the "value" in dollars of the delivered code. It 
> described the dollars spent but not the dollarized value 
> delivered. Again see some of the intro materials in the link above.

Can you express the dollar value of a completed User Story?  Or the dollar
value of a requirement in the Functional Specifications document?

	- George

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