Fantasy Development Methodology

Scott Berkun’s talks about dysfunctional development methodologies.

He has left out Fantasy Development Methodology.

Here are the basic steps:

• Sales promises delivery of fantasy product on a fixed cost fixed time basis
• Business analyst specs up fantasy software
• Project managers spec up fantasy schedule
• Engineers make fantasy estimates
• Lead engineer adopts fantasy methodology
• Fantasy driven development meets fantasy-driven schedule
• Software doesn’t work, but journalists have already been told of how well the new rollout went
• Party for engineers, promotion for sales team and the IT manager