1. BY DAVID SANDERS, CS 470, 11-13-08 Hatching a Catastrophe

2. EPIC FAIL Don’t be like Microsoft and make something like Windows ME or Vista.

3. Epic Fail starts with Minor Fail How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time. It’s easy to fix one massive problem, but it’s the series of small problems that is hard to handle.

4. Milestones or Millstones? Have a schedule that contains a list of events called milestones. Each one has a date. Milestones must be concrete, specific, measurable events, defined with knife-edge sharpness. Coding, as a counter-example, is “90 percent finished” for half of the actual coding time. This cannot be a milestone. Have milestones that are 100%, like “source code complete, keypunched, entered into disk library,” “debugged version passes all test cases.”

5. Milestones or Millstones? By having such defined, concrete milestones, it’s rare that a worker will lie about the progress. Estimates of length, made and revised a few weeks before the start, do not significantly change as the project draws near. During the project, overestimates of duration come steadily down. Underestimates do not change until about three weeks before the scheduled activity.

6. “The Other Piece is Late, Anyway…” Just because someone else’s piece is late does not give you an excuse to slack off. This time must be made up elsewhere. Example given is a baseball coach and the nonphysical talent of hustling.

7. Under the Rug When a manager sees the team slipping behind, often they don’t want to worry the boss, so they sweep it under the rug. The boss then has to lift the rug himself, first by reducing the role conflict and inspiring sharing of status. Then, he yanks the rug back.

8. Reducing the Role Conflict The boss must determine the action information and status information. He must have status-review meetings (a better label than problem-action meetings), and helps determine where everyone is at.

9. Yanking the Rug Off Have a report showing milestones and actual completions. This is the key document. This report is the agenda for the meeting. The component manager should be prepared to explain why it’s late, when it will be finished, what steps he’s taking, and what help, if any, he needs from the boss or collateral groups. Be honest, or face epic pwnage. We are called to this as followers of Christ.

10. What Happens if you Fail?

11. Questions?