Seventeen weeks in a release cycle is not necessarily as much time as you might think as only a portion of that period can be devoted to actual development. One of the most important steps is to calculate the amount of time each member of the team can be projected to devote to specific tasks during the process. None of us has the luxury of being able to focus 100% of our time on any one assignment and the Development team is no different. Whether investigating escalated issues or fixing bugs, participating in meetings or managing email, reviewing RFDs, answering questions or taking personal or vacation time, all of these activities must be anticipated and accounted for in our resource estimations.
Next, think about the various jobs that are involved in creating a release beyond the writing of code. Based on their roles, team members are called upon to participate in design sessions, draft functional specifications and write test plans, as well as share in the iterative code/test cycles leading to acceptance. Further segmenting the resource pool, we must consider the various specialized skill sets amongst team members whether working with screen creation (UI), core Host coding, Diplomat messaging, serial interfaces, vendor certifications, reporting or forms design. Every member of the PD staff has areas of expertise that need to be taken into account as we begin to determine the various types of projects that can be completed within the allotted time frame.
Once all of this has been compiled and we have a sense of the structural composition (core Host vs. Integration) for the release, we can finally turn our attention toward identifying specific projects that can be considered.
In the next post, we’ll look at the sources from which we gather the projects we tackle.
Written by Rick Downing, Senior Product Manager, SMS|Host
Posted 9/07/2021
