Surviving at the Software Industry. (5) - What to do?

This chapter helps us to create a well structured plan. Knowing our abilities and skill, the book emphasises in dividing the project on three phases: the discovery, invention and implementation. Discovery is to find new areas of our project, and trying to find all the opportunities of it by doing interviews. Invention is the place where we create our ideas, and implementation is to put those ideas on paper and actually make them a reality.

When you already think that you are ready for the implementation face, now it is time to create a staged delivery plan. This is achieved by analyzing all the requirements, dividing our teams and having a design ready. The Stage Delivery plan is pretty detailed about the activities of all teams and if helps you to know what will you get when a phase of the project is done.

By doing a Stage Delivery Plan we can get this advantages:

• Critical functionality is available.
• Identifying risks earlier.
• Aknowledging of problems on earlies phases. 
• Status-Reporting overhead is reduced.
• Staged delivery makes more options available and gives us flexibility at work.

On the othe hand, by doing a Stage Delivery Plan we also get this disadvantages:

• It increases the project overhead.
• It increases the cost.
• It needs plenty of testing.
• a.k.a. More money.

When you get your client's money (of course this is a joke, don't take it to seriously), you can now think on the planning phases, the staffing and the code growth curve; each of these phases have a stage of requirements, architecture and construction (So right now, we are on a phase inside of a phase inside of another phase, if this ain't Inception, I don't know what it is then). To go from one stage to another one, you should be positive that you can work with what you already have.

It is super important to have milestones and deliverables. If not, we won't know in what phase of the project are we on. The also help the team to commit to the project and as a PM you can see how everything is working along.

That's all folks I'll upload the chapter 6 in just one moment, so stay tuned!