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Tell Everyone the Truth All the Time

                          The most important principle in this book is transparency. A project manager constantly
                          makes decisions about the project. If those decisions are based on real information that’s
                          gathered by the team and trusted by management, that’s the most likely way to make sure
                          the project succeeds. Creating a transparent environment means making all of that infor-
                          mation public and explaining the rationale behind your decisions. No software project
                          goes exactly as planned; the only way to deal with obstacles is by sharing the true nature
                          of each problem with everyone involved in the project and by allowing the best solution
                          to come from the most qualified people.
                          But while anyone would agree with this in principle, it’s much harder to keep yourself
                          and your project honest in practice. Say you’re a project manager, and your project is run-
                          ning late. What do you do if your boss—much to your surprise—announces to the world
                          that your project will be done on time? Unfortunately, when faced with this situation,
                          most project managers try to change reality rather than deal with the truth. It’s not hard
                          to see why that approach is appealing. Most people in software engineering are very posi-
                          tive, and it’s not hard to convince them that an unrealistic deadline is just another techni-
                          cal challenge to be met. But the passage of time is not a technical challenge, and if the
                          expectations are unrealistic, then even the most talented team will fail to meet them. The
                          only real solution to this problem is to be open and honest about the real status of the
                          project—and that’s going make your boss unhappy.
                          And so, instead of telling the truth, many project managers faced with a deadline that’s
                          clearly unrealistic will put pressure on their team to work late and make up the time. They
                          silently trim the scope, gut quality tasks, start eliminating reviews, inspections, and pretty
                          much any documentation, and just stop updating the schedule entirely. And, above all,
                          they wait until the very last minute to tell everyone that the project is late.., hoping
                          against hope that luck, long hours, and a whole lot of coffee will correct the situation.

                          And sometimes it works... sort of, until the users have to work around bugs or missing
                          features, until programmers have to start patching the software, and until managers have
                          to go on a charm offensive in order to smooth over rough relations among everyone
                          involved. Even if the deadline was met, the software was clearly not really ready for

                          release. (And that’s assuming the team even managed to squeeze it out on time!)
                          That’s why the most important part of building better software is establishing transpar-
                          ency. It’s about making sure that, from the very beginning of the project, everyone agrees
                          on what needs to be built, how long it will take to build it, what steps will be taken in
                          order to complete the project, and how they will know that it’s been done properly. Every
                          tool, technique, and practice in this book is based on the principles of freely sharing infor-
                          mation and keeping the entire project team “in the loop” on every important decision.








                                                                                            INTRODUCTION  3
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