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The first question that must be answered for the Momentum project is whether a software project has mass. We typically associate mass with weight and sometimes loosely with size. Our software projects can certainly be thought of to have size as some are bigger than others. I have worked on projects with sixty people and a huge codebase which was definitely bigger then a project with two people and one thousand lines of code. It is not a great stretch to assume that bigger projects probably weigh more however to do such would be to assume that all projects have a constant density. Weight, size, density, mass; can these terms be used to measure a software project? I hope so because once we have calculated a project’s mass we need to determine its velocity and direction. The product of mass and velocity should give us a standard and hopefully universal value for momentum which can be used to communicate the status of a project.
Jimmy Nilsson wrote a great post yesterday entitled The big picture of software development in which he says,
If we are in control of the code, then the business people can come with a request for a new feature that will create a new business opportunity and we can achieve it in a matter of, say, a few weeks. A couple of changes in the codebase might translate into millions of dollars. That codebase leads to high business value and the cost for achieving it is low.
This statement captures the ideal for any company. A few weeks worth of changes could potentially reap millions of dollars in market opportunity. This is where we all want to be and where few very of us actually are. This statement is only valid for a project with momentum; a project that is healthy and can be moved from point A to point B along a given vector in a consistent and predictable way.
Over the next few weeks I will delve into slightly more formal definitions of mass and velocity and propose ideas for how these terms can be applied to real world software projects.
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My name is Zachary Ruiz. This is my blog.
I have a day job, but this blog contains my own thoughts, opinions and musings about software and technology which do not reflect those of my employer(s). 