“Another amazing ability for an open-source community is to be as predictable as Eclipse has become. If someone had said that it would be possible for an open-source community to ship on time to the day for eight years in a row, they wouldn’t have believed you.” Eclipse at 10: An incredible journey, SD Times, December 2011.

Projects that consistently complete on time? Gee, we can’t do that, they are (some quality “X”) but we are (some quality “Y”)! No way can we complete projects predictably on time and with good quality. That is just naive and not in touch with the real complexities of business, engineering and the world!

In spite of these kind of sentiments we then went on to deliver projects on time and with good quality, project after project after project. Preceding this was years of late, low quality, projects in what were often otherwise successful organizations (military, government and commercial). It is doable. We’ve done it.

A good way to get started is to first dig up how well we’ve done in the past.

Resolve to just get smart on how to deliver on time and then just work — patiently, persistently — on getting it done. Now. This year. Just do it. Yes we can.