Quantum Mechanics, Buddhism and Projects
by Rolf Goetz
Every once in a while I run into fellow requirements engineers who seem to ignore the fact that the holy project objectives trinity of Time, Budget, and Scope is all about interrelated, inseparable ideas. Why are they ignorant? After I heard about recent insights from quantum mechanics, an explaining theory formed in my head. I will add a little cognitive science and Buddhism to support my argument.
Conclusion: people might have a mental model too simple for covering the actual interrelation present.
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| Quantum_Mechanics_Buddhism_and_Projects_for RQNG.pdf | 48.82 KB |
Any two
Ginny,
thank you for your insightful comment.
I think your right, Greg's sentence was not meant to mean "ignore the third."
However, I met quite a lot of people who do - which was the trigger for the article.
And yes, I agree that quality is missing in the equation. I like Jim Highsmith's generalization of the Kaizen Triangle at the Agile09 conference (value - quality - constraints by Jim, delivery - quality - cost by Masaaki Imai (?)). Time and Budget constrain projects actually.
The point is: one should never focus only on parts of the balance. For the requirements people this actually means that Budget, Time, Scope, Value AND Quality are requirements to consider all the time. I believe we first and foremost have to make use of methods that allow us to specify value
and quality. Tom Gilb's Planguage comes to mind here, the only human-readable specification language I know of that really 'delivers' ;).