I read this book because Tom and Mary Poppendieck recommended it to me at XP Day 3 (Their book on Lean Software Development is a must read.). It is an important book because it places Return on Investment (ROI) at the heart of IT prioritisation and decision making. If your company is not doing this, then it will have lots of trouble with its IT projects. The book explains ROI and Net Present Value (NPV) and then presents a heuristic for delivering the optimal deliver of ROI. The heuristic depends on having groups of functionality with associated revenues (These groups are called Minimum Marketable Functions or MMFs). The book then presents a methodology for delivering optimal ROI that works with RUP or Agile. I’m tempted to try out the heuristic although I suspect that most decent project managers could work out the optimal delivery without the use of the heuristic (one of the approaches they suggest.).
The big question that the book leaves me with is “Where do the revenue figures come from?” The book gives an unsatisfactory single sentence answer along the lines that they are produced by marketing and the business. If you want my thoughts on this, contact me by leaving a comment and I will send the article that Andy Pols and I have just written on this subject.
Overall I liked the book, it is well written and easy to read. My one contention is that RUP comes before Agile. ;-)
Posted by chrismatts at January 27, 2004 4:55 PM