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The thing that helped me the most personally with my estimate accuracy is estimating times beforehand, and then tracking the actual time and evaluating the accu

The thing that helped me the most personally with my estimate accuracy is estimating times beforehand, and then tracking the actual time and evaluating the accuracy of my own estimates. This is partly to get out of the mindset of trying to explain why past estimates were over/under and focus on being more accurate in the future.

rpwilcox 11y ago
Did it help? How often did you end up repeating the same task? (Personally, I have this feeling that my tasks tend to be varied enough that 'number of times done' would almost always == 1, however, I don't have any actual data to back that assertion up. (And maybe you used this to hone in on the "true hour cost of a 2 story point task"???)
- elevensies 11y ago
  I am probably thinking here at a different level of granularity than you are, I would be talking about days to weeks here. I can't recall ever repeating the same task. It helped by letting me notice systematic errors and by helping me calibrate optimism / pessimism. In my estimates I was focused too much on development time and not providing adequately for testing and deployment. On an existing project with the procedures already well in place it was fine, but for new or new-ish projects I was always under-estimating. The other thing was calibrating my margin of safety. I now typically estimate at 2x the time that I think it will take to allow for unexpected issues and unrelated tasks that always pop up. That also works for me with the expectations of the people that I work with -- the estimates are used for planning and coordination and aren't effectively deadlines, but if I underestimate too often is causes coordination problems with the business people.
- alexc05 11y ago
  Surely you're getting the sense of the patterns of things you're doing. Maybe something like "that's probably 3 loops and an email" That's a couple hours for the loops... A couple more for the email, assuming HTML has to be dynamic based on a model with 5 values... Etc... Sure it's not identical every time, but the patterns are the same.
  - rpwilcox 11y ago
    Sure, sometimes. Between that, the story point ideal of "... relative to other tasks completed in the project", and a long enough term project, things may start to look the same _in that project_. It also depends on how much leeway your estimates can have: if it turns out to be waaaay more than two loops and an email, what happens? Does management just nod, or do they start "negotiations" about not paying for the work it took you over the "estimate"?
alexc05 11y ago
It's funny, we've got the ability to do that at work, we track our time in 15 minute blocks and break each task down. As an agency (maybe it's the same everywhere), I think there is wild external and internal pressure against giving accurate estimates. When you get in the room with the project managers and the sales people, you can see their eyes rolling as the costs escalate. "How long is implementing Google analytics going to take?" Maybe 3 days? "3 days really? That seems high, can we write in 2 days there?" Well we can, but it's still going to take the same amount of time.
- jacques_chester 11y ago
  I've seen this too. I'm lucky to work at a place where engineering estimates are taken seriously. Most of the objections I see to estimating are objections to their abuse.
rickhanlonii 11y ago
"Tasks" in Intellij is great for this. You can hook it up to you project management tool (github, JIRA, trello etc) then checkout an issue and it will create a branch for that issue and track the time you spend on it.

rpwilcox 11y ago

Did it help? How often did you end up repeating the same task? (Personally, I have this feeling that my tasks tend to be varied enough that 'number of times done' would almost always == 1, however, I don't have any actual data to back that assertion up. (And maybe you used this to hone in on the "true hour cost of a 2 story point task"???)

elevensies 11y ago
I am probably thinking here at a different level of granularity than you are, I would be talking about days to weeks here. I can't recall ever repeating the same task. It helped by letting me notice systematic errors and by helping me calibrate optimism / pessimism. In my estimates I was focused too much on development time and not providing adequately for testing and deployment. On an existing project with the procedures already well in place it was fine, but for new or new-ish projects I was always under-estimating. The other thing was calibrating my margin of safety. I now typically estimate at 2x the time that I think it will take to allow for unexpected issues and unrelated tasks that always pop up. That also works for me with the expectations of the people that I work with -- the estimates are used for planning and coordination and aren't effectively deadlines, but if I underestimate too often is causes coordination problems with the business people.
alexc05 11y ago
Surely you're getting the sense of the patterns of things you're doing. Maybe something like "that's probably 3 loops and an email" That's a couple hours for the loops... A couple more for the email, assuming HTML has to be dynamic based on a model with 5 values... Etc... Sure it's not identical every time, but the patterns are the same.
- rpwilcox 11y ago
  Sure, sometimes. Between that, the story point ideal of "... relative to other tasks completed in the project", and a long enough term project, things may start to look the same _in that project_. It also depends on how much leeway your estimates can have: if it turns out to be waaaay more than two loops and an email, what happens? Does management just nod, or do they start "negotiations" about not paying for the work it took you over the "estimate"?

alexc05 11y ago

It's funny, we've got the ability to do that at work, we track our time in 15 minute blocks and break each task down. As an agency (maybe it's the same everywhere), I think there is wild external and internal pressure against giving accurate estimates. When you get in the room with the project managers and the sales people, you can see their eyes rolling as the costs escalate. "How long is implementing Google analytics going to take?" Maybe 3 days? "3 days really? That seems high, can we write in 2 days there?" Well we can, but it's still going to take the same amount of time.

jacques_chester 11y ago
I've seen this too. I'm lucky to work at a place where engineering estimates are taken seriously. Most of the objections I see to estimating are objections to their abuse.

rickhanlonii 11y ago

"Tasks" in Intellij is great for this. You can hook it up to you project management tool (github, JIRA, trello etc) then checkout an issue and it will create a branch for that issue and track the time you spend on it.