I guess some of this is ot, but you said any comments.
In my shop lead enginers are most productive coders ( I measure LC via
CVS stats) and also get to... lead the project. (I have no project
managers, who'd respect them?).
This is how I size my projects. Most similar is Scrum (minus scrum
master) methodology to what I do.
Step 1: takes unlimited amount of time.
Mockups of every screen and report in HTML. (everyu field).
I can't possibly size it. My clients, users managers, either know what
they want or don't. This way I know # of screens. Only senior leads work
w/ clients to extrack mock ups (newbies tend to say "I know" to client,
when they should say "No, I have no idea what you want", lets write it
down).
I call this mock up.
Step 2: I estimate that each prodcitve developr can do 3-6 modules per
day iterative based on my 15 years + as lead. (Yes, I have a
productivity goal. Also I have no meetings or LAN downtime). So that
kind of means that seasoned guys can do "6" "screens/tiles" per day, vs
less experienced guys can do "3". Since Sturts is MVC, there are like 3
iterations. This is sizing. I do not make a Microsoft Project plan,
becuase that artificialy limits prodtivity. (like ok, this iteration is
not to be finished untill next week, so it eats my profit. I keep anyone
who think MS Project = Project Managemnt away from my projects)
3. View layer iteration I do 1st. Something like ren *.html *.jsp plus
clean up. Then I get them to make tiles, and link each jsp to be called
by empty action that just forwards to "normal". Also emtpy formbeans or
form maps, with some fake data in constructor. For displaytag, I use a
collections, again fake data in contructos. I don't do menu or
naviagtion in this iteration. I do CSS here. Clients like to debate
colors and images.
This I call prototype, it has emty action and tiles and css and it looks
like it works, but no data. (3-6 per day). Clients love how quickly I go
from 1 to 3, it shows listening ability and responsivnes.
Notice that you just wrap an emty struts sceleton arround clients screens.
4. By now, my DBA studied step 1 and has designed an E/R model. I get my
developers to write DAO's matching step 1 / 3 and unit test each DAO
CRUD. (They are not tied to action or anything Struts). (3-6 per day).
5. Action was blank so far. Tie DAO to Action and View. (3-6 per day).
Each developer worked on same vertical slice aka module.
6. Navigation and QA (3-6 per day). Since navigation is dynamic, users
should be able to go from any page to any page at any time, I do it
last. (story boarding is a waste, business process is dynamic and
changing, data is static).
7. Interfaces. It takes at least several days per external interface if
they are well defined in step 1. Write those, starting after 4.
Done!
For example, we did 1Up.com 104 screens (each screen had many tiles) for
$760K w/ 30% margin over 4 months with 5.5 developers using above. (qa
came in at end, to validate that mockups in 1 are just like #6. It was
fixed bid. In hind sight, I think we would have had higher produtivity
in PHP.
I guess you can see how I don't use top down or bottom up, uper case or
UML. I just count screens.
Some modules are harder than others. But over life of project it averges
out. So I allways say 3-6 per day no mater if easy or hard. I don't
study process, it's a waging tail. I just split screens into modules and
assign modules to developers. Moduels can be by type of user of you
system. For example on your project you could have 1 developer write
Admin MVC modules, another do Exibitior MVC modules and a 3rd do Manager
MVC modules.
I do not think you sized # of screens/reports from you post at all. They
can allways change their mind about you not understanding the process
and making you change your design, just when you think you are done.
But lets say that there are 5 defined screens in each of the 3 modules.
After you have HTML mocups, you should be done in a week w/ 3
developers. HTML mockups of each field on screen can take month or 2 to
validate. ALso, if client wants 200 screens/reports but can only afford
100, they have to pick the ones they want in version 1. And then
external interfaces depend on if the external ones are defined and
avilaalbe.
So my esitmates are not hard dates, they are:3 monhts from when we get
all the hard copies of html mockups you want in version 1. (So if client
wants a release in April, by Jan 31st they should pick the screens they
want in version 1). Also, it can take a few weeks to mobilize developers
(hire, etc.)
Stupid games you play are like client will say: It's 20 screens, start
now, by the time you are 1/2 done, I'll show you the screens. I allways
have my developers surf the web and go see a movie while client figures
out what they want.
I had one developer do 18 modules in one day, no it was not me :-) ...
it was a she. (She got to be the lead on my next project). A module is
not one class, it's usualy a few classes.
But think of it, can you do a DAO per hour? and action per hour? why
not! (and I do let guys go that can't keep up :-( ). It's not high
stress, it's high job satisfaction from puting projects in production.
So short story is, see if you can sit down w/ the client and sketch out
in html what they want to see. (and politley listen when they talk about
process, but no need to write that down)
hth,
.V
http://roomity.com
Dave Newton wrote:
Heya,
This is Struts-related because I'm using Struts, other than that it's
more of a project management thing. I am not a project manager; I pretty
much suck at anything smelling even slightly of management, and I hate
most everything about project management.
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