Nine Common Strategies for Managing a Growing Defect Backlog

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In response to my request for questions along the lines of what do I do when … ? Jo asked:

What do I do when the defect backlog keeps growing with low impact (and low priority) defects and nobody seems to pay attention to them as we have more important features (or medium/high) priority defects to deal with? Should we deal with it or just stop logging low impact defects?

Faults are an inevitable part of software delivery. I only briefing touched on managing lists of faults in Agile Project Execution so it is well worth expanding on.

In fact defects is an area where software delivery, including agile software development, can get messy. Luckily there are ways to manage this mess or to avoid it altogether. Jo’s question hints at potential answers but there are others. In fact I know of at least nine common strategies for managing a growing fault list.
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Reporting Success Stories Alongside Formal Benefits

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Ever since I read "Made to Stick" by the Heath Brothers I’ve been a keen collector of success stories about my programme.

As the programme manager I have to report on the progress of my team. Risks, Issues, Budget, Milestones, Financial Benefits, Reach, etc, etc. Lots of numbers and facts. Terribly significant and rather dull.

So, to spice things up, I also report on success stories.
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What do I do When … ?

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A few years back I did a big agile roll out and I asked people for a list of the things which might upset the agile software delivery process. Although I asked for Agile Gotchas the team actually came up with was a set of questions on "What do I do when … ?".

I’ve answered many of these questions in my big articles on Agile Project Management but I’ve decided to put a bit more focus on them. So, in a new series of monthly posts, I’ll answer questions on the theme of What do I do When.

I have some questions in mind but I would also welcome other questions along the lines of What do I do When … ?. If you’ve got a suggestion please drop me a line or add a comment.

Can Cucumber save Raja?

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I’m worried about Raja. Unless I do something drastic he’s going to die. In a rather messy and unpleasant way. Crushed by the weight of a 60 person-year software product.

But I think I’ve got a solution. Cucumber might well save Raja from his gruesome fate.
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New Agile Teams and the Overcommitment Bear Trap

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The most common problem I’ve seen with software development teams is over commitment. Invariably individuals and teams are overly optimistic about what can be done in a certain time period. There are any number of reasons for this including arbitrary management deadlines and the team not pushing back, the developers desire to please, and just the fact that estimating in software development is hard.

Agile development teams are just as prone to this problem as any others. Every team I have helped transition to Agile has stepped into this bear trap almost immediately. And forewarning them doesn’t help. I now see stumbling into the trap as a valuable lesson and an essential step in the process of getting more mature about software development. I don’t mean maturity in the sense of the SEI’s Capability Maturity Model, I mean maturity in the sense of growing up, being realistic and accepting the limitations in themselves, their team and the organisation.

The difference about Agile, compared to traditional approaches to software development, is that Agile offers techniques to avoid the over commitment bear trap.
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Software Craftsmanship is skilled software development in small scale production

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In this, the fourth post in my series on software craftsmanship, I interpret Wikipedia: Craft in the context of software development. I’m doing this because Ade Oshineye: Software Craftsmanship – More than just a manifesto
recommended the wikipedia definition of craft although Ade generally avoids dictionary style definitions for software craftsmanship (Hoover and Oshineye, 2009).
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A Lean-Agile Perspective at the Project Research Institute

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I was recently asked to write a series of blog posts for the Project Research Institute of Athabascau University in Canada. The institute wanted to expose their audience, mainstream project managers, to an Agile perspective. I relished the opportunity and readily agreed.

My aim with my PMI series is to show how the principles and practices of Lean-Agile Software Development offer creative solutions to general project challenges such as governance, uncertainty and complexity, under estimation and empowerment. My first post for the institute tackles this head on and I argue that Lean-Agile relevant to all project managers” simply because Lean-Agile offers a new slant on these problems. I am not advocating the wholesale adoption of Agile by all project managers. Merely to offer up a different perspective to that of main stream project management. Armed with this perspective project managers from other domains may be better placed to face their own challenges.

The first couple of posts have already been published and the rest of the series will appear over the next couple of months. If you want to follow the series on the PIR site then have a look at my blog at Athabascau. Otherwise I’ll also post updates here.