Scenario:
Finished requirements, analysis, design; completed development and testing; in UAT; Production deployment: 1 week away.
Customer: Hey this field name does not exactly represent what we want to convey. Can we change its name quickly before we go live?
Eager Novice (who is unfortunately in front of the customer at that moment): Oh yeah, that's just a small change in the Customer model. I think we an get this ready and unit tested in 2 hours.
Customer: Great. Lets git er done!
Project Manager (wary of customer and afraid to rock the boat on an already shaky project): Sure we can do that.
Grizzled Veteran/Grey Beard (who for some reason wasn't consulted on the change request): Hmmm....have we done an impact analysis of the change? What are the downstream impacts on code that references this field? What do we need to do to propagate the change to the db? What about the seven or so Web Services that are impacted by this field change? How long does it take to do a regression test? etc...
Net effect: 2 Hrs initial estimate given to customer; 4 Days worth of work in actuality; Production deployment moved down a week..
Scenario: Finished requirements, analysis, design; completed development and testing; in UAT; Production deployment: 1 week away.
Customer: Hey this field name does not exactly represent what we want to convey. Can we change its name quickly before we go live?
Eager Novice (who is unfortunately in front of the customer at that moment): Oh yeah, that's just a small change in the Customer model. I think we an get this ready and unit tested in 2 hours.
Customer: Great. Lets git er done!
Project Manager (wary of customer and afraid to rock the boat on an already shaky project): Sure we can do that.
Grizzled Veteran/Grey Beard (who for some reason wasn't consulted on the change request): Hmmm....have we done an impact analysis of the change? What are the downstream impacts on code that references this field? What do we need to do to propagate the change to the db? What about the seven or so Web Services that are impacted by this field change? How long does it take to do a regression test? etc...
Net effect: 2 Hrs initial estimate given to customer; 4 Days worth of work in actuality; Production deployment moved down a week..