RE: Value Chain Mapping

--- Kent Beck <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have worked several places where the upfront planning and the
> deployment of QAd code both took longer than programming (like large
> Swiss banks.)

Ouch. Even the Swiss pharmaceutical companies I've worked with only managed to
take half as long as programming :-)

> The diagram looked something like this (working backwards in time):
>  
> Deployment, 1 day <- Customer approves model changes, 4 weeks <- We make
> model changes, 2 weeks <- Customer specifies model changes, 1 week <-
> Final code deployment QA, 2 weeks <- Waiting for QA, 4 weeks <- Code
> "freeze" QA (and development), 6 weeks <- Development, 8 weeks <-
> Project planning, 4 weeks <- Waiting for marketing approval, 2 weeks <-
> Marketing requirements document, 4 weeks <- Engineering initial
> estimates, 2 weeks <- Waiting for engineering initial estimates, 2 weeks
> <- Marketing vision document, 1 week.

Fun: you can immediately see that the value-adding time here is around 8-9 (out
of 42!) weeks (marketing vision + programming).

You eliminate:
13-14 weeks by doing planning and requirements concurrently with development
9-10 weeks by doing QA concurrently with development (seems TDD still should be
high on the list...)

But both of these have everything to do with XP, so why were the first things
to hit non-XP?

Perhaps less process change with low-hanging fruit?
7 weeks by parallelizing model changes
10 weeks by eliminating wait times
  
> It took us about 1/2 hour to come up with this (don't spend longer than
> that or you'll have too much detail.)

Let me try 5 minutes with my current company:

Deployment, 1 week <- Acceptance testing, 4 weeks <- IT configuration 2 weeks
<- Wait for IT, 4 weeks <- Sales, contract negotiation, variable (months...) <-
Release to production server and final testing, 2 weeks <- Regression testing,
1 week <- Code freeze, QA, stabilization, 1 month <- Programming, 5 months <-
<- Business approval, 1 day <- Wait for business approval, 3 weeks <- Project
planning, 1 month <- Functional specification and design, 2 months <- 
Requirements, 2 months <- Business approval, 1 day <- Wait for business
approval, 1 month <- Formulate marketing vision, 1 week <- Fuzzy front end,
variable (months...) <- First product idea

Probably less than 2 months of value-adding time in all of that...

Arien

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