As akeefer pointed out, this was a long rant which finally got to the point: separate effort and scheduling. Take a quick chop at estimating effort, but not in terms of duration/dates on a schedule. Relative size works fine. It's better to take a quick hit at estimation over and over again as you begin to see empirical results than it is to spend a lot of time up-front trying to do the perfect estimate.
Software management is not like programming. It's also not like other kinds of management. Any group of people needs some sort of management function. The trick is to put in the most lightweight structure possible. For some reason many technical people of great intelligence, when faced with planning activities, begin to construct various kinds of paper and mathematical wonderlands to live in. We naturally enjoy creating complex models.
Software management is not like programming. It's also not like other kinds of management. Any group of people needs some sort of management function. The trick is to put in the most lightweight structure possible. For some reason many technical people of great intelligence, when faced with planning activities, begin to construct various kinds of paper and mathematical wonderlands to live in. We naturally enjoy creating complex models.
Don't do that.