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Very rarely is estimation about simply the work required. Estimation is normally off because something unexpected happens. Staging environment down, build serv
by UK-Al05 8y ago
Very rarely is estimation about simply the work required.
Estimation is normally off because something unexpected happens. Staging environment down, build server is broken. An external dependency takes longer than expected. On a new unfamiliar legacy code base where our previous work estimates no longer apply. Those unexpected problems vary widely in how long they take to resolve.
Yeah, if you estimate on a familiar code base, when everything goes right it's easy. But very rarely is that the case.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoExactly! Development tasks where the within-task technical software issues are the determinant of time estimation are so fleetingly rare that estimation is not useful as a general practice. In fact I might even _define_ “senior engineer” as someone who has been around long enough to know this and has come up with some way to pacify managers with meaningless estimates in a way that protects the team so it can actually still do work.