Throughout that I have often been asked "Kevin, when do you think this feature/release/update will be done?". Generally it wasn't with a view to locking us into a deadline, but, quite reasonably people wanted to know when to expect it.
Often this was in order to do things like prepare marketing or support in time for the release. Such as when we upgraded an ERP, we needed to prepare the team and customers for a new format of invoice. So very much a real-world need.
Along with that I feel strongly that all such "complex" projects should be agile, I've seen the horrors of old-school waterfall first-hand. Not necessarily big A "Agile" with scrum and such, but certainly agile as in being prepared to track and adjust the plan and expectations at every turn as the learnings, and ideas come in throughout the delivery.
But how do you track to a deadline or expectation, and still be flexible and agile throughout the delivery? Surely there is a tool that can take your remaining plan of work and calculate approximately how you are tracking. Well as it turns out there isn't, so I wrote it and that is "Fixed".
Fixed is focused on answering two crucial questions:
"Are we on track?", and
"What are our options if we're not?"
On that mission I have provided an app with:
- Clear traffic lights and timelines which give an instant view of how the project is tracking
- A visual "what-if" mode for exploring options in scope, resources, and timing - this mode has been designed to be usable as a tool for an individual, or in collaboration with a team such as in a strategic planning meeting
The initial release is a Jira marketplace app. It takes the current plan of work, simulates the delivery of the rest of the tasks and presents projected timing for all your releases, epics and sprints.
It also applies innovative logic to levelling your team by skill. E.g. if you have 20 backend python tasks and 3 backend python devs, it will distribute the tasks evenly across them. Most other systems either don't differentiate your team members, or force you to arbitrarily assign resources to tasks before it levels the plan.
To maintain agility, each day, week, month or whatever, you can push a button and get an update of that projection to have a readout of whether you are on track. Then you can adjust the plan, or expectations, accordingly.
You can see a demo video here: https://youtu.be/CFDbAdexwlY
And add the app for a free trial to your Jira account here: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1229649?tab=overview&...
More info at: https://fixed.pm
I would love people's views and feedback on how I can make it better serve the vision of reducing the stress of agile project management.