Tracking Project Status with Requirements
Instead of guessing at the percent completion of a project, use requirements status to really show where you are.
“How are you coming on implementing that subsystem, Yvette?” asked the project manager, Dave.
“Pretty good, Dave. I’m about 90 percent done.”
Dave was puzzled. “Didn’t you say you were 90 percent done a couple of weeks ago?” he asked.
Yvette replied, “Yes, I thought I was, but now I’m really 90 percent done.”
Like nearly everyone, software developers are sometimes overly optimistic when they report how much of a task is complete. The common “90 percent done” syndrome doesn’t tell Dave much about how close Yvette really is to finishing the subsystem.
But suppose Yvette had replied, “Pretty good, Dave. Of the 84 requirements for the subsystem, 61 are implemented and verified, 14 are implemented but not yet verified, and I haven’t implemented the other 9 yet.” Tracking the status of each functional requirement throughout development provides a more precise gauge of project progress than top-of-the-head guesses about percent completion.
Tracking project status means comparing where you really are at a particular time against the…
