Comments on: Agile Charts

By: Graph Burn-Down to Burn-Up the Work « SocialOptic

Graph Burn-Down to Burn-Up the Work « SocialOptic — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 15:30:57 +0000

[...] Rusk describes how they work in his post – Agile Charts - which is over 6 years old, but still up to date today. Now, not everyone likes burn down [...]

By: Simple Tools | agile scope management tool

Simple Tools | agile scope management tool — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 22:16:03 +0000

[...] As for MS Project, well, where do I start… [...]

By: Agile Charts. Are we on time? Are we on budget? « Michael Ayvazyan on the Network

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 06:22:16 +0000

[...] just read about Time and Budget Charts proposed by John Rusk on June 30, [...]

By: Apples and Oranges

Apples and Oranges — Fri, 20 May 2011 02:29:45 +0000

[...] Earned Value teaches us that the only valid measure is to compare actual cost with actual progress. This may seem a bit like “comparing apples with oranges” – we seem to be comparing things that are not the same. The trick is, before we compare them, we convert them both to the same numerical units. That’s what makes the comparison possible and enables all the predictive goodness of EVM. [...]

By: John Rusk

John Rusk — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:09:39 +0000

Hi Paul,

Interesting you should comment on this today. Just yesterday, I gave a talk that covered the points you raised. I’m afraid I covered them in the talk better than I have in anything I’ve written on this site. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post the talk online one day.

In the meantime, here are a number of points in response to yours:

1. Earned Value handles change just fine. I wrote about that here: http://www.agilekiwi.com/earnedvalue/charting-change/ . In agile terms, Earned Value’s green line is just velocity, and no-one says that velocity is invalidated by scope changes.

2.To use Earned Value, you do need some kind of rough scope for the whole of the project. In XP terms, this would be a set of epic user stories. In FDD (another “flavour” of agile) it would just be the usual FDD feature list. In agile, making a list like this at the start of the project is _optional_. (Your comments imply that it’s _banned_, which is not the case for most flavours of agile). So, if you make such a list, you should use EV; if you don’t, you shouldn’t. [See the opening pages of this article for more details: http://www.agilekiwi.com/earnedvalue/agile-charts-part-ii-the-evm-perspective/ ]

3. You mentioned the agile manifesto. I don’t see anywhere where is says there is no such thing as “on budget” or “on plan”. What I do know is that one of the co-authors of the manifesto promotes something that is _exactly_ the same Earned Value’s green and grey lines. See Alistair Cockburn’s site, here: http://alistair.cockburn.us/Earned-value+and+burn+charts . Alistair has been supportive of “my” “innovation” of adding the budget burn line, quoting my site both on the above page and in the 2nd edition of his Agile Software Development book. (Sorry about the name-dropping. Just wanted to reassure you that I’m not a lone nutter ;-)

I apologies for being unable to explain the above points more fully right now. Hopefully I’ll get around to a new blog post on the topic one day. In the meantime, I strongly (but respectfully) refute your suggestion that the premise is flawed ;-)

Regards

John

By: Paul Nanouk

Paul Nanouk — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 00:58:57 +0000

The problem with this seemingly nice and neat “time and budget charts” is that you forget 2 things:
1. Agile does not have set requirements, they can change depending on the desires of the owner/owner’s rep (according to Agile Values and Principles)
2. Without set requirements, how can you draw you very nice and neat “grey line” labeled “planned value?”

According to Agile Value and Principles, there is no such thing as “on budget” or “on plan” (see the Agile Manifesto 4 Guiding Values). You premise and flawed and therefore of little value in “Charting Agile.” Good try, though.