DSDM Atern – tutorial 1 (Trần Xuân Trường)

2. Principle 2: Deliver on time

In order to fulfil on-time delivery principle Atern teams need to : 

• ·         Use timebox approach
• ·         Focus on business priorities
• ·         Always hit deadlines.

Timeboxing the work of projects is a powerful practice which truly helps facilitate on-time delivery. A timebox is a fixed period of time at the end of which one or more deliverables have been completed. What we are focusing on here is the completion of deliverables by the exact deadlines and a timebox is only successfully achieved by then. Timeboxing takes advantages of iterative development approach as it breaks down the project into small fixed periods of time, usually two and four weeks which is a reasonable time span for development team to meet the objective of that timebox. Longer timeboxes, say 6 weeks, usually would cause the team to lose focus and it is logical and common sense that short timeboxes always push development team into hard working mode to fulfil the requirements agreed on at the beginning of the timebox.

On top of that, there is this Daily Standup part in all timeboxes in which development team together shares information on what each member has been doing to achieve the timebox’s objective and what he  will be doing till the next standup , as well as any problems he has been having that prevents him or the team from achieving the objective. Daily Standups would help identify problems earlier, so that the development team can fix them in early stage, save time and do not miss the deadlines.

DSDM pratice uses MoSCoW prioritisation for business priorities, which also help keep product deliveries on time.  As stated in the MoSCoW rules, the total effort invested in Must Haves should not above 60%, so it makes sure that development team can at least guarantee to deliver those Must Haves and present a usable product on time. Even if the team do both Must Haves and Should Haves, the total effort is still no more than 80%. We only use 80% of the development time to bring out a fine usable product, therefore we definitely deliver the product on time.

In conclustion, the combination of timeboxing and reasonable MoSCoW prioritisation allows the development team to predict the time of deliveries and always hit deadlines.