After i read about Planning and Estimates in Agile there a 5 factors why planning a projects is fail. And i thinking about it.. Is it true.. Is it happen if i'm apply it into my development of products... Ermmmm... it maybe happen.. So here i want to share what i have exprienced and know with all of you. Hope you all can avoid this to happen in your project development.
1. Planning always on activities rather than feutures.
In almost traditional approaches in planning a project, they are always give an avtivities status to the user rather than in Agile, we give a functional system to the user to keep up the status by an iteration. The traditional approach, by each of priod time, they will be give a status of an activities they have been doing on some priod of time reffering on Gant's chart. On traditional approaches, activities is pass after the others activities is finished. But if the first one activities is still not finish the second activities will be not doing. Because it's have to be pass down the activities. And because of this lateness, the delivery of the product will be delay from expected time. And also, the unindependent activities will make this traditional approaches will be dependent on other activities to be done.
2. Multitasking on employee
When we assign a multiple task on a developer, the productivity of the developer will drop down. This is happen when the developer cannot do the all task which have been assign to him because of big responsibilities he have to carried. Because on this presure to meet a deadline with a lots of task, moral will down and productivity will drop. as example which in Mike Cohn book, as he said "Loading everyone to 100% of capacity has the same effect as loading a highway to 100% capacity: No one can make any progress".
3. Features not developed on priority
The traditional planning approaches is always prioritized the work by value to the user and customer. In traditional planning, we will plan all activities to the success of a projects. Will will go through one by one all activities to meet the complete system. And all developer will consider that all activities which have been planned and put in Gant's chart is mandatory and have to complete by the dateline. But at the end, the activities which have been complete is actualy no value to the customer. Customer not satisfy and have to reproduce. In agile this will not bee happen because user or customer will se a functional delivery by each iteration and any changes, the will find earlier.
4. Ingoring of Uncertainty
Ignoring on uncertainty is very big mistakes on planning. Without assuming user will not change their requirement cann kill your project successness. The customer or user is first. That the slogan.We cannot hope to identify every activities that will be needed in the course of a project. Maybe later on suddenly customer found that some feuters which really greate to them. This can make late delivery and the planning is fail. To avoid this, we can work in shot iterate. We deliver functional system to user in every each iteration. Work in short iteration so user will alway can see a functional system that we will deliver to them. Some missing task we cann add into the system because user find it on functional delivery. This will reduce uncertainty.
5. Estimates become Commitments
Estimating is very important to a team because before the start working, the have to figure out what a risk they will face. If we as a planner estimates short of time but there a lot of risk a team will face, than the team will cannot deliver the product. So estimating have to equivalent to the commitments the team will give. Such as Phillip Armour (2002) said "An estimates is probability, and commitments cannot be made to probability"
Adios