Saturday, February 19, 2005

Thoughts on DOI #6 - Situationally Specific

And finally, I conclude my explanation of the Declaration of Interdependence with the sixth statement about situationally specific strategies and tactics.

#6 - Situationally Specific

• We improve effectiveness and reliability through situationally specific strategies, processes and practices

For me this was the hardest of the six statements to accept. I had wanted something stronger - a recognition that the most effective solution couples the engineering discipline with the project management discipline and allows them to feed off each other intelligently. I’ve learned this from FDD. The project management aspects of FDD are different because the Coad Method of software engineering enables a different way to think about project management. Project management in FDD isn’t some generic task-centric formula. It’s based on the architecture and analysis method. The reporting isn’t standard earned value rather it’s based on the production of features. I believe that when project management and engineering disciplines are combined a more effective process is delivered. I didn’t get that. So I settled for this message about situationally specific opportunities which gets us most of the way there.

So for me, the DOI is embracing the idea that it is OK to argue for different approaches and to go ahead and customize project management techniques and to couple them to knowledge of how the engineering technique works. It’s OK if you can show that it is leading to a more economically effective solution.