In summary, changing organizations' perception of time and what can be accomplished within it takes much effort, yet a three-week project that uses extreme programming techniques can do this. What has typically gone right in many of these projects is that given the tighter time constraints political barriers break down and programmers work more effectively with one another and a shared sense of accomplishment begins to pervade the team. In addition, the broader purpose of the development and its integration points become much clearer. Finally the three-week project rules out excuses that were used in the past to either not get work done on time and avoid accountability or not press the norm of a six to nine-month window of development in many organizations.
Lessons Learned: What Went Wrong
Programming can quickly become myopic and too focused on a single set of factors, which often leads to the broader, more critical factors of how the application will integrate with other systems and processes being ignored. In addition, if the emergencies inherent in the project are not addressed and there is not a very strong sense of common objectives being fulfilled, the entire team's morale will suffer. Any political divisions that may have slowed down projects from being completed in the past have also been known to significantly slow down a three-week project schedule as managers battle for their employees' time over the needs of the project itself.
Too often when collaboration on a project team breaks down and the team begins to revert to its old processes of doing work, there hasn't been a leader who keeps the three-week project on track. This lack of leadership is one of the most common reasons for a three-week...
As is too often the case when the expectations of a three-week turnaround are created and the team's collaboration and leadership breaks down, programmers are asked or required to make up lost time by working longer hours. This turns into 60 hours then 80 hours, then 6 day a week work schedules with coding work given as work to be done at home over weekends. On the worst projects experienced, this insistence on the three-week project deadline even though the processes that would make collaboration work effectively have broken down, falls on the shoulders of the developers and programmers. This has led often to turn-over in the departments who have the most valuable employees, in addition to a sense of being out of control within programming departments, leading to low morale. The best strategy to take when managing a three-week project that goes awry is to back off and re-define the timeframes and objectives, seeking senior management support and guidance. Without the endorsement of senior management and an extreme programming champion, many projects fail.
Summary and Conclusion
The use of extreme programming to complete projects in three weeks is challenging how many organizations perceive time, and this is inherently very positive. Many companies become too complacent over time and forget to focus on how to improve their processes to become more competitive and aligned with the customer. Three-week development projects need to create a very high level of collaboration on teams and use the intensity and urgency internally to make the project goal a shared one, where all groups can share in the accomplishment of the deadline.
