Do Less With More (So More Gets Done)

About our speaker:

Jamie Dinkelacker serves as Geo/Maps Engineering Manager at Google Inc., in Mountain View, California. To learn more, go here: http://maps.google.co....

About our topic:

Why are software projects so often late? Or are they? From what does this notion of "late" arise? Is it just a characteristic of software development, perhaps of software developers, maybe its project or product managers, or something else.

This talk offers two basic assertions. First, project "date setting" is a deeply flawed exercise irrespective of myriad (and often conflicting) "best practices" regarding project scheduling. Second, most problems arise from a misunderstanding of how to effectively staff a software project. The essential underlying notion is that software is developed by people and people are not machines, irrespective of whether accounting rules or naive managers attempt to treat them as such. In the end, what is important isn't the claim of when a project will be done, but the confidence one can have in such a date. That is the underlying theme of this talk.

Jamie Dinkelacker has been managing software development for over two decades ranging from fleet-footed startups to large plodding multinationals and has found that the story is the same -- applying an industrial age mindset to software development results in missed dates (or more accurately, falacious dates), project turmoil, and staff turnover. There is a way out of this dilemma -- is it simply do less with more, so more gets done.