starting point in discussions with your customers and, if possible, the
authors of the original documents.
When have you got to deliver?
This may well be difficult to determine, particularly if you are planning
to introduce new functionality gradually. If in doubt, ask your cus-
tomers; if you cannot get even a rough feel for how long the first stage
of work is going to take, you need to clarify what it will involve by
talking to them some more about it.
If your customers ask how long something will take, go away and
work it out as well as you can, then double it, and then add ten per
cent, and it will still probably take longer than that. The reason why
you won’t have a problem with this is that you have in reserve the
programmer’s secret weapon – the 24-hour day.
Yes, there are times in software development, as in life, where sleep
is not an option. These times are brought about by things known as
‘approaching deadlines’. We will deal later on with how to cope with
worst-case scenarios; for now, don’t get pressured by timescales,
because slippages are recoverable.
If you really have to give a delivery date, give a partial one – when
you expect to deliver at least some of the functionality required, prefer-
ably the bits that you have already started. Then explain to your cus-
tomers that you will need to consider their comments on that rollout,
and you will then be able to give them a date for the subsequent
deliveries.
Your project proposal may contain predetermined delivery dates. If
so, this will help you plan your work. If not, you may need to plan this
yourself. We will look more at what this involves later on – we need
to determine what we have to deliver before we can say when it will
arrive.
How will success be measured?
If you don’t know where the hoops are, how can you jump through
them? If your customers cannot tell you how they will define success,
you can never succeed.
If you and your customers are unable to agree, in writing, before
you start, what they will be happy with at what stage, then unless
18 PROJECT DEFINITION