Re: (OT) Proving Productivity?

[Abigail-II]

Milestones. You need to make a list of milestones that your program must make, then you can measure your progress by the amount of milestones you have reached.

But that's easier said than done, as some milestones would require a lot more work than others. And it might be quite a task to come up with a useful set of milestones. However, if start with making a design of what you are going to do, and in which order, you already have a start of your list of milestones. And you can make as many milestones as you want, depending on whether you want to make a milestone a week, or have several milestones a day. Also note that you can have several milestones per 'feature'. A milestone for implementing it, another one for writing its test set, and a third for having it pass all tests.

Abigail

[Ovid]

That sounds wonderful with one little caveat: I've discovered that if I separate tests from the code in any way shape or form, clients say "let's save some money by skipping those tests". Instead of trying to justify the tests, I don't mention tests at all (unless they ask) and just turn in my code with a full test suite. Since I get done on time, there's never been a problem with that route.

Aside from that, I think next time I might try the milestone route (or "deliverables", as dragonchild puts it). I currently create full estimates and now tha I look at them, my task breakdowns seem to fit milestones quite nicely.

Cheers,
Ovid

New address of my CGI Course.