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"When the plan is foggy, that’s the moment to communicate as broadly as possible." Here's a good rule of thumb: Ask them to explain what has to be done, and th

by scrame 9y ago

"When the plan is foggy, that’s the moment to communicate as broadly as possible." Here's a good rule of thumb: Ask them to explain what has to be done, and then count the number of times they say "it should be pretty straightforward". Consider those multipliers of complexity.

dudul 9y ago
I apply a similar algorithm, except I use the word "just" as variable. As in "we could just stick this in a DB", or "isn't it just about adding a checkbox to the page?"
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  Using Just and extremely easy should be where you make a milestone for each statement(s) after that .
- sopooneo 9y ago
  Absolutely agree. I had come to the same conclusion about the same term. I had thought to call it "just-ifying", but then I remember that is already a real word.
jschwartzi 9y ago
Or measure how annoyed they are when you ask them to go into specifics about what they expect.
TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
Relevant XKCD [0]. Lots of topics vary wildly in complexity, depending on what's actually expected of the developer. For example, I could see how implementing an authentication system might take as little as a few hours to as much as a few months. I think developers sometimes get overconfident when they can just reach for a library to do anything they need, so they underestimate the complexity of having to implement everything themselves. I've seen tons of great examples of this while doing frontend work. Need a typeahead component? Just pull in some plugin or library and wire it up, frontend development is so easy! But if you actually go implement your own you quickly realize there's lots of details to consider in order to make it accessible and user-friendly. Working with local data? Might want to go brush up on search algorithms. Throw in a bit of extra fun if you need to support multiple languages. [0] https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/
- aphextron 9y ago
  It's funny that with easy to use CV libraries like TensorFlow nowadays this cartoon has lost it's edge, although the point stands.
  - jtmcmc 9y ago
    it's funny because that was from 2014 - so he was just off by a few years
qaq 9y ago
This. +500 The devil is always in the details something that sounds obvious but yet is hard to express clearly by PMs will def. be the thing that takes a while to implement (and more importantly to get all stake holders to agree on what "it" actually is)

by scrame 9y ago

dudul 9y ago

I apply a similar algorithm, except I use the word "just" as variable. As in "we could just stick this in a DB", or "isn't it just about adding a checkbox to the page?"

zitterbewegung 9y ago
Using Just and extremely easy should be where you make a milestone for each statement(s) after that .
sopooneo 9y ago
Absolutely agree. I had come to the same conclusion about the same term. I had thought to call it "just-ifying", but then I remember that is already a real word.

jschwartzi 9y ago

Or measure how annoyed they are when you ask them to go into specifics about what they expect.

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago

Relevant XKCD [0]. Lots of topics vary wildly in complexity, depending on what's actually expected of the developer. For example, I could see how implementing an authentication system might take as little as a few hours to as much as a few months. I think developers sometimes get overconfident when they can just reach for a library to do anything they need, so they underestimate the complexity of having to implement everything themselves. I've seen tons of great examples of this while doing frontend work. Need a typeahead component? Just pull in some plugin or library and wire it up, frontend development is so easy! But if you actually go implement your own you quickly realize there's lots of details to consider in order to make it accessible and user-friendly. Working with local data? Might want to go brush up on search algorithms. Throw in a bit of extra fun if you need to support multiple languages. [0] https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/

aphextron 9y ago
It's funny that with easy to use CV libraries like TensorFlow nowadays this cartoon has lost it's edge, although the point stands.
- jtmcmc 9y ago
  it's funny because that was from 2014 - so he was just off by a few years

qaq 9y ago

This. +500 The devil is always in the details something that sounds obvious but yet is hard to express clearly by PMs will def. be the thing that takes a while to implement (and more importantly to get all stake holders to agree on what "it" actually is)