‘Suppose the stakeholders say “Can we get THESE features by christmas”. That’s a fixed time, fixed scope question. Looking at trend lines, Pat says “Nope, sorry, it ain’t gonna happen”, followed by “here’s how much we can get done by christmas” or “here’s how much more time we need”. It’s generally better to reduce scope than to extend time, because if we reduce scope first, we still have the option to extend the time later and add the rest of the stories. Vice versa doesn’t work, because, darnit, we can’t turn the clock backwards! Time is rather annoying that way, isn’t it?’
- Henrik Kniberg