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Scrum: Dealing With Fixed Date, Fixed Budget Work
Even though many organizations now understand the mechanics of the Scrum framework, the adjoining change in approach to product delivery is often harder to grasp. Just the other day the traditional question arises: can you deliver product X by this deadline, within budget?
Ah, the old, trusted iron triangle. We couldn’t live with you, could we? Well, turns out we can! Fixed date, fixed budget projects will still continue to exist. Sometimes things have to be delivered before a certain deadline. A client comes to you and asks “Can you deliver by x date, and what is it going to cost me?”. Of course, we can deliver something. Let’s have a look.
Forecasting price range
A new product development effort requires a Scrum Master, a Product Owner, and 7 Developers. They have a deadline in six months from now. For the sake of argument, let’s say the average hourly rate is $100. They all work full-time (40 hours per week). Six months has roughly 130 working days, assuming no one would take a day off.
1 day of work = 8 hours x $100 = $800
130 total working days x $800=$104000
We have a team of nine people, so $104000 x 9 = $936000, purely based on labor. Add some resources like licensing etc. and we end up somewhere near a million dollars.
