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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some good insights, some I disagree with., 6 Dec 2002
By A Customer
First of all a good story, and some nice points about software development along the way. I liked the changed staffing model, that overstaffing is bad, the point about people not thinking faster under pressure, wish-dates for deadlines don't work, the management dynamics (modelling your hunches), and the points on conflict resolution (mediation is easy). But I must say I disagree with the last minute implementation theory. And no testing until the implementation is done?? It looks a lot like the good old waterfall model! Very few clients will let you defer implementation till the last 1/5 or 1/6 of the project! If they can't see progress from the beginning they get nervous and start shouting etc. Second, the staffing model as explained (staffing up agressively towards the end of a project) seems to ignore the time it takes to integrate new members into a team. In the story Mr. T luckily has 3 teams doing about the same thing, so getting them up to speed is easier. In real life I haven't seen that so far. Note, the story deals with integration time earlier in the book, so I think the solution to raid the existing similar teams is too easy / far from reality :-) Try again! I'd say I believe more in the XP way of doing things. Same staffing model, start small, staff up as the software develops. Lots of early implementation and testing, yet still enough design to avoid killing the project. And the client always knows exactly how much he has at any time. That is, the software as it runs today!! ... but then again, I haven't been a manager :-) only been exposed to a lot of bad ones.
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