Natasha D'Souza

The “Periscope” session at Ramius seemed to resonate with the audience. This event was sold out and Craig Fitzpatrick, from Devshop, promises to have more of these sessions, just ask him.

Craig? started his presentation with the Developers everywhere are in terrible pain video. He followed this by asking the audience what were the pains and risks when it came to the project management of software development.

Pain vs Risk

• unclear requirements
• compressed schedules
• change of requirements
• conflicting needs
• lack of budget
• deadlines not communicated
• user feedback too late
• changes in staff
• inexperience
• manage support during development
• balancing testing/development

Top 5

• estimate work
• pure development time vs fighting fires
• premature speculation (promises)
• requirements out of sync. with schedule
• not planning for change

Devshop?

• time estimation error
• distraction rate
• schedule confidence
• tie requirements and designs to tasks/estimates
• churn/context switching

So far Devshop 2.0 addresses the first 4.? Craig, followed this discussion with a demo of the software.? It’s pretty cool.

The main concern was the good vs evil use of this tool, i.e. used for policing.? So for all you project managers in small to mid- sized companies that are looking for a solution to help you accurately manage your development projects, give this a shot.