Craig Fitzpatrick, CEO of Devshop, led a talk entitled 'Kicking the top bad habits of project management' to an audience numbering near 30 for our Periscope Lunch & Learn last Wednesday.

When we invited Craig to come in, we were wanting to see a bit of his new Devshop v2. Craig of course demoed it, and he also provided us with some interesting insight. We heard how Craig translated his 13 years of experience and know-how leading software development teams into launching a startup that designs and develops a project management tool that reflects his particular point of view.

"It's the predictability, stupid . . ."

Craig recounted his personal story of a manager he once worked for. Craig was employed on a project, developing software for this manager and he was late in delivering. The manager pointed out that his issue with Craig was not that he should have worked faster to deliver on time, but that if he knew that Craig would be slower than what Craig had estimated, he could have managed the other parts of the project better. This lesson highlighted for Craig that although time and speed are important factors in a project, being predictable may be paramount. This story formed the basis of Craig's philosophy about project management and he launched Devshop in order to build a tool that can help a team better manage the project risks associated with unpredictability.

Craig has distilled the common factors that, when done poorly, can throw a project off-schedule into the following:

1. Estimating how long it will take to do a task;
   
2. Spending time on pure development (vs fighting fires);
3. Making delivery promises - without due diligence, it's "premature speculation;"
   
4. Keeping requirements and designs in sync with schedule;
5. Planning to roll with spec changes.

Craig has tried to design into Devshop software a means to accommodate for these 'human behavioral' issues. Bearing this in mind, Craig's idea is to “Give it (the bad habits) a name and start to track it." Accordingly, his above list was translated into:

1. Tracking Time Estimation Errors;
2. Checking Distraction Rates;
3. Monitoring Schedule Confidence;
4. Tying requirements and designs to tasks;
   
5. Watching for churn / context switching.

Devshop project mangement software is designed to help team members using it to track these five items. Over time, trends can be seen on how team members work (or don't work). With this knowledge in mind, the team will be become more predictable.

Here is a video of Craig’s talk. It’s a long video, some 50 minutes. Jump ahead to 32m 43s to watch Craig demo how Devshop v2 handles some of these items.

If you like to try this out yourself, Craig is offering a 6 month free trial of his ‘Lean & Mean Team’ Plan. Email Craig, mention this post and ask him to hook you up!

Our thanks go to Craig and his colleague James Taylor for presenting and for those of you who attended! Look forward to seeing some of you again when we next open up our Boardroom A for the next Periscope Lunch & Learn!