Planning a Systems Project or Software, as a creating process, face a big deal of difficulties and challenges before getting the final goal. The time is the first enemy, I mean, trying to distribute it appropriately means to face a world of details and maybe get lost in the functional speculations of processes. This situation may be really nerve racking because there are important resources of the organization and also people that are involved in the project and we can't take them for granted. To define the goals of the project, the functionalities, complexity, the resources that are necessary, all of them will make possible for the programmers to make a more realistic time calculus. SACRIFICES To be honest, it hardly ever occurs, usually the computer programmers are called to participate in a project that must be finished in a certain period of time. Once the project starts, we realize that is necessary to adjust our daily routine because there isn't enough time and finally we have to sacrifice ourselves for an schedule we didn't do but we have to follow anyway. PLANNING Divide and you'll conquer! There isn't a better way to express how we can face all our programming concerns. If we divide a process into its elemental "threads", we'll identify the core of the program we are trying to develop and also the small tasks that are necessary to reach our goal in the time we agreed on. Then we'll be able to say how much time it'll take to finish the project. MI CALENDAR We are now in the stage where a programmer will be distinguish from others, the level of knowledge, devotion, and of course the experience in the area of projects development. All this facts can make the difference between programmers. If I am an expert programmer or even if I'm not, the calendar is something very useful. The estimation and the time approaches go under a conscious self-assessment of my skills, looking through my past experience and after meditating the risks depending on the difficulty of the "game". That's the way I'll know the real time that the project will need. Besides, the programmer's ethic will be matter of judgement for other programmers who would like to continue the system development task. THE HOURS HAVE GREAT WORTH Someone may say that one program module has three sub-tasks and it can be done in two days. We shouldn't forget that there must be an specifcation of time for each single task we're going to make. To be more exact, this time should be expressed in hours. GEE! ... BAD TIME CALCULATION ! It is undeniable that some extra details, functionalities and validations will appear while the project is going. All this things break our schedules and we say…This weekend again!!…Why me??? The fact is that we have to keep a Time Controller Record, so we can compare the time we calculated with the real one. In so doing, we'll be able to detect where the errors are and at the same time we can learn some tips to avoid future problems in other projects. CONCLUSIONS Tasks planning makes it possible to determine the time we need to develop a project. The time should be expressed in hours, so everybody can understand it clearly. A bad estimation of time is something that always happens. Rather than getting desperate, try to reduce this kind of errors " learning from your mistakes". Make sure you have a Time ControllerRecord. BIBLIOGRAPHY Joel Spolsky's articles http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Pedro Concepción Nova - Systems Analysis and Design http://window.to/concepcion.com.do     Otros Artículos del Autor: Fecha Publicación: Libertad de libertades Abril 26 del 2004