Deadlines, Defects and Risk: Managing the Three-Headed Dragon

The commercial pressures of the economy and the need for speed often impose unwieldy deadlines for software projects. Yet the nature of software projects demands that teams deal with constant change and scope growth within these fixed deadlines. By understanding software project dynamics, managers empower themselves to make better decisions about promised functionality, thereby controlling the very factors that degrade software quality and reliability. This presentation addresses why software development, an example of "knowledge work," is different from other types of work, and how knowing its behavioral laws can help managers avert disaster.