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priorities were often reevaluated in the light of what the team felt could be
achieved based on its
specific experience with that specific project.
Given this business model, the next question was: “What attributes of work
products and tasks are actually used to consistently meet customer expecta-
tions?” The answer that most team members at BOND felt was right was that
they worked to the constraints the customer gave them with respect to Cost
and Schedule targets.
Effectively they backed into the answers from the customer input in terms of
cost and schedule. While this is not the approach in many traditional devel-
opment organizations, because BOND personnel had close working
relationships with their customers, this approach worked effectively. This
example demonstrates how some traditional estimation methods might be
affected when working in a collaborative relationship with your customer.
As a result of this discussion, we did not force the team to conduct an
unnat-
ural act
related to estimating work product and task attributes. We simply
documented the process “as-is” and shared this approach as the model that
has helped the organization succeed to date. This was the process encour-
aged on future projects.
It is important to note here that this is an example of an Agile practice that is
highly dependent on customer relationship. It should be discussed with the
lead appraiser early to avoid surprises during an appraisal. We also trained
personnel to become aware of the dependency this practice has on a
collabo-
rative customer.
It could easily backfire in a noncollaborative nontrusting
environment. This point was emphasized during the training of project lead-
ers at BOND. It is also important to note here that a key objective related to
being disciplined, whether Agile or traditional, is developing a capability to
assess size or velocity to know how much you can commit to get done. For
more information on estimating when using Agile methods, refer to [25].
Section II
Lessons and Answers to Common Questions
5.16 Lessons from Formalizing Planning at BOND
We d i d a d d a d e g re e o f f o r m a l i t y t o t h e p ro j e c t p l a n n i n g a c t i v i t y a t B O N D .
Requiring a PMP document was a change to the organization's culture. At
