Agile and Gantt chart : Agile Chronicles: Can Gantt Charts be Agile?
Thomas Menguy | September 28, 2006Interesting read :
Agile Chronicles: Can Gantt Charts be Agile?
We try to put in place Agile methods here, but even if as software developpers we strongly believe in the iteration process and so one : we have traditional clients that need to know Date/Schedule/What is in a release/Is the project going late? by how?. And for me, and for now, even if Task/user story are “agile” in our process, I need a Gantt Chart to give DATES/DEADLINES/SCHEDULE to my hierarchy, taking into account my team holidays, the impact of bug fixes vs features coming from different clients.
I’m incomfortable in respect to Agile methods because of this deadline thing:
- Either client/management has to adapt and forget the deadline stuff, accepting many incremental changes and releases….hum forget the incremental release stuff in the embedded space, with those awfull build systems.
- Agile has to be adapted to present a Schedule and Deadline frontend … because it is what PEOPLE understand, forget team velocity, % completion, etc, the only things clients/hierarchy want to know is by how much days you will be late
What do you think? what solutions did you put in place to make Agile compatible with businesscases?
Hi, were you able to get more information on this?
Vladimir | December 1, 2006Hi, were you able to get more information on this? I have started a discussion thread on this topic in an xp user group: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/xp-be/messages/493?threaded=1&m=e&var=1&tidx=1
Yes, In fact we are using Xplanner for now
tmenguy | December 1, 2006Yes,
In fact we are using Xplanner for now with a mechanism to export automatically in MS project to have some date/deadline, etc… are you interested in this type of features?
Thomas
Sounds interesting. What are your experiences with the export features?
Vladimir | December 1, 2006Sounds interesting. What are your experiences with the export features?
Not so bad after all: I can have a gantt
tmenguy | December 1, 2006Not so bad after all: I can have a gantt view with some dates in my MS project to be reported to the program managers … it is where it is difficult to adopt agile: Program managers are accustomed to MS project/Waterfall project management, so Agile mean nothing to them cause, for me, it lacks something crucial : predictability. So having a Gantt view extracted automatically from an Agile Flow is a good thing for me….
You are so right Thomas. Clients rarely care about
Jason Glover | July 8, 2009You are so right Thomas. Clients rarely care about velocity. They want to know that the project is going to be finished when you said it would be.
I’ve had an interesting experience lately helping a friend get a project back on track. The project is being implemented by a third part so I find myself dealing with a vendor who claims to be Agile, but realistically they come across as just cowboys.
I wish they’d used Team Effect (http://blog.teameffect.com/post/Team_Effect_equals_Agile_friendly_Gantt_charts.aspx) and then maybe things would have stayed on the rails.
I know it was a while ago since you were asking about Gantt charts and Agile projects but perhaps you still haven’t found anything that does the trick.
Regards
Jason