Q5) I loved the Hudson Bay story in your book ... can you share that here?
Sure. Here's the quote from _Manage it!_ :"The Hudson Bay Start approach was originated by the Hudson Bay Company in the 1600--1700s in north eastern Canada. The Hudson Bay Company outfitted fur traders. To make sure the traders hadn't forgotten anything they needed, they left Hudson Bay and camped just a few miles away. By making camp just a few miles away, the traders ensured they hadn't forgotten any tools or supplies---before they abandoned civilization. With just a short start to their journey, they had a better idea about their ability to endure the winter.
On one notable project, the management team mandated a new computer, which necessitated a new compiler, a new build system, a new product with a new GUI, and most of a new team. The team had no idea how to make anything happen, so I suggested we use a Hudson Bay Start. I suggested we do "Hello world" just to see if we could. Of course, everyone laughed at me (sometimes that's the role of the PM), and it took us an entire week to write Hello world and nothing else to the screen. We celebrated at the end of the week, and now we had enough data to estimate what it might *really* take to do the work. Sure, we went a little faster as people learned how to make the infrastructure work, but the product was difficult to imagine and implement. Our estimates were surprisingly close for several months. That's the value of a short iteration. Learn by doing and use that data to predict the next iteration.
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