Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules

Late Project: Feature Cuts

Feature-set control continues to be important through the end of a project. Even if you were successful at specifying a minimum feature set up front and controlling changes through the middle of the project, for a variety of all-too-familiar reasons you can still find yourself behind schedule at the end of the project.

By the time you reach that point, one of the most potent schedule-reduction options is the elimination of low-priority features. This practice is effective because it eliminates effort associated with further implementation, testing, and documentation. This practice is in common use at Microsoft, where it has been found to be an effective means of reigning in late software projects (Cusumano and Selby 1995, ...