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I don't know. We see quite a few (civil) engineering project that are ~on budget. A few that are wildly over. But the thing is, in software engineering - if yo
by e12e 8y ago
I don't know. We see quite a few (civil) engineering project that are ~on budget. A few that are wildly over.
But the thing is, in software engineering - if you ever need to do again, something you have done before, it should be just a copy away.
So you'll never spend time on something you've done before. And if you do, that time is essentially wasted - something that shouldn't be billable.
Now that's the ideal, obviously - reality is a bit more nuanced.
- ashelmire 8y ago> And if you do, that time is essentially wasted - something that shouldn't be billable. If I develop a feature for company A, then reuse it for company B, isn't A footing the bill for B? I mean, we all do that, but I think it's worth thinking about.
- e12e 8y agoIt might be billable to comp B (they got the value add), but internally that should not have high cost (in hours, resources) attached. Ed: that is to say the time is wasted - but might very well be able to charge a premium on the experience. In my original comment I was mostly talking about making feature x for customer a, then making feature y for customer a. Where x and y are pretty much the same.
- pas 8y agoThat's the problem. In theory every bridge is the same. Yet you need to plan each one of them. Similarly every run of the mill business-as-usual boring-as-fuck CRUD corporate internal "app" is the same, yet they still need a lot of work, and they are still hard to "estimate".