The Regenerate Web

Johanna Rothman has been blogging about Estimating Tasks: How Much Time is in Your Day?     I have a different take on the situation.  The metric that she is describing is related to estimation, but estimation should not contemplate duration, only effort.  So my estimate for a task ought not vary based on my availability to do work, as the task could be assigned to another available resource.  However, my "velocity" does vary from week to week, and in fact from day to day.  I submit that VELOCITY is the amount of work that you get done within a specific period of duration.  This period can be measured as a day, a week, or a month, depending on how frequently you measure.  

OK! So everyone who has had received requirements for a project that were inadequate please raise your hand.  What about requirements that were difficult to determine if they were adequate without rewriting them from scratch?  What about requirements that primarily describe the current situation, and not the desired future state?  How about requirements that are written more as a functional specification (I need a report that has these data elements with this sorting grouping and formatting)?  Sometimes it is hard to