Squeezing The Schedule

Gamasutra offers some oft-overlooked points about managing software projects. I particularly agreed with…

• Only plan the things you've scheduled for the next two months down to days, get the rest planned to the nearest week, you'll be replanning anyhow. You need to have the plan for the next milestone nailed down, so you know when it's going to end. Towards the end of each milestone you should revisit the plan: check that the work planned for it still makes sense; add anything that got cut from the current milestone (assuming you're date-driven) and of course work out how you're going to deal with the extra work now in the next milestone (find a new person to do it, push something else out into a further milestone, etc.). All of this can make quite a difference to what you thought would be in the milestone, so any detailed planning done early could be wasted.
• Know your team. Then be smart about who does what. Sounds obvious, but isn't that easy to do when you can't give everything to your star performers.