7 ms·

What's stupid in wanting to get an idea of how much a project costs in order to decide if it's a good idea to pursue, let alonr allocate resources?

danielbarla 7y ago
Nothing, inherently, except perhaps the fallacy of comparing a pair of jeans to the rather chaotic and unpredictable world of bespoke systems development. One is inherently known (a pair of jeans you've presumably already manufactured), the other is one big unknown, basically.
- ellius 7y ago
  Aircraft, hospitals, hotels — a million complex bespoke things are built every day. Cost and time projections are inevitable.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    > Cost and time projections are inevitable. As inevitable as blowing through the projections.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Right. You can imagine a conversation something like: "Ok, how long is this project going to take?" "Well, it's still being defined..." "What do you mean you refuse to tell me how long this project is going to take?" The analogy is so ridiculous that the person making it clearly doesn't even comprehend the domain he's discussing.
- ben509 7y ago
  He compared to jeans because they're an extremely trivial purchase that someone would give little thought to, but still demand to know what they cost. The point is that in all cases you need that information, with a major software project you simply need it far more.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > you need And that's the core of the problem (which, ironically in the context of the article, agile methodologies were supposed to address): wanting or needing something to be true/exist doesn't make it so.
mstade 7y ago
I think maybe the point they're trying to make is that comparing a software development project that may include a number of unknowns to buying a pair of jeans where there are probably very few if any unknowns is fallacious and a waste of time. That said, I don't think it's black and white. Some projects, making a simple web site that follows whatever Squarespace template is popular and filling it with some relevant content can be a pretty simple project, even to the point where the buying a pair of jeans comparison makes more sense. The problem, I suppose, is when you believe strongly that every project can be accurately priced up front. Not every project is a moonshot, but some truly are and it's not always obvious up front which ones are.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lonelappde 7y ago
  And every engineer likes to pretend that their project is a moonshot. If you are inventing something incredible,why are you someone's employee instead of getting capital investment or self-financing from your last achievements?
  - asark 7y ago
    It is when stakeholders throw curveballs. "We want you to do this." "Sweet, easy enough, I'll just use X, Y and Z, no problem." "Oh but sorry you have to use A, B, and C instead. Oh and it'll need to connect to D for reporting, and we'd like it to sync with E which we've never done but they have an API so it can't be too hard, right? Oh and it needs to fit this design we've already approved that's about as far from native to the platform you're developing for as it could be and has a ton of UX issues that require fundamental changes to fix, which you'll uncover as you work. That's about as easy, right?" "...." [EDIT] oh and also one "minor" feature we're going to toss in later is actually big enough to build an entire company around so you'll have to waste a bunch of time talking us down from that while we quietly lower our opinion of you, and we've accidentally described a few things which are basically impossible by egregiously violating e.g. CAP theorem or being what's effectively a highly-available distributed filesystem that needs to fit without our timeframe and budget, which is 1/20 what it would take to maybe build that and that alone.
twic 7y ago
Writing software is design, not manufacturing [1]. Do companies know accurately in advance how much it will cost to design a new nuclear power plant, aircraft carrier, or jet engine? [1] http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2.htm http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2...
- apatters 7y ago
  There are times when something truly original is being built and it's a valid argument for estimate uncertainty. But a significant portion of the industry is engaged in building CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17, and a significant percentage of estimates end up wrong because some developer who was bored with his job decided to use a blingy new Javascript framework he had no experience with because he wanted a challenge. Money gets lit on fire again and again this way and it's frankly selfish and irresponsible.
  - learc83 7y ago
    If the software is truly that unoriginal, use something off the shelf. The issue is that in literally every non-toy product I've every been involved in the product owners will always turn CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17 into something significantly more custom and much more complex. >because some developer who was bored with his job decided to use a blingy new Javascript framework he had no experience with because he wanted a challenge. That definitely happens, but I think it's a different problem.
    - asark 7y ago
      > The issue is that in literally every non-toy product I've every been involved in the product owners will always turn CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17 into something significantly more custom and much more complex. YES! The cost of custom-everything design and bespoke gee-whiz is vastly under-appreciated, IMO. CRUDy Android and iOS apps using built-in widgets and simple color theming? Relatively easy to estimate, and pretty damn fast. Custom-everything, we want both to look pretty similar (so, probably Material-ish given current trends, which you'd think would come for free at least on Android but... doesn't), custom animations everywhere, oh I hate that default date picker on this particular Samsung phone (and sure, it's god-awful) can we customize it, and the designer came up with this layout for this form that requires all kinds of twisty-bendy manipulation to reproduce versus something more straightforward but that's what the "stakeholders" approved so let's do that. Et c. et c. and pretty soon the app's 10x as expensive (no exaggeration!) because you couldn't live with the easiest-for-the-user-anyway default styles with some custom coloring. And the Web's at least as bad. Often you're also making your page way less usable and breaking it on certain browser/device combos due to the extra effort you put in to make it "pretty", at great cost. [EDIT] in fact I've in the past suggested providing design points for "pretty gee-whiz versus not-actually-bad straightforward implementation" to make product owners choose between getting e.g. three normal (and OK-looking but not "pretty") features or one pretty feature in a sprint, to make this cost more visible and give owners on a budget more flexibility in shipping features, but it never caught on—in particular designers hate, hate, hate the idea, I think because it might expose that their work is sometimes (often...) more expensive than it's worth (and vastly more expensive than they're being paid, since it also eats huge amounts of developer time) given you've got some developers with even a hint of aesthetic and UX sense on a project.
ALittleLight 7y ago
"How long will X take?" "I don't know, I've never done X before." "Yeah, yeah. It doesn't have to be perfect analysis, just a rough idea for scheduling. Not written in stone, ha ha." "Uh, a week?" "Okay, great, so if I say 8 days you should have it done by then?" "Yeah, I hope so." "Great, thanks." Day 3: actually doing X requires unforeseen Y and Z which will each take a month. "We need to add Y and Z to the schedule, which will each take a month." "There's no room for that in the schedule." "Then I can't do X" "We've already costed X and committed to it. We've got to do X. We need to make X happen. When can you get back to me with a path to green for X? And also, let's schedule a post-mortem to figure out why we missed on X." At the post-mortem, PM doesn't show up: "Uh, turns out we missed on X because I estimated it too quickly and the PM committed to those estimates. I didn't know about Y and Z when estimating, and these are things I could have done to detect them as requirements if I had known to do so." Email from PM: "Hey, could you give me an estimate for X'? Doesn't have to be perfect, ha ha."
- ant_li0n 7y ago
  Yes. This happens at my shop all the time and it's absolutely terrible. Each sprint starts out positive and ends with panic attacks.
  - asark 7y ago
    I've solved this by not panicking about software someone else owns. Worked out OK so far. They can fix their processes and expectations (I'll help!) to get more value out of me, or choose not to. Not my problem. Environment gets too toxic, well, see ya, and good luck (you'll need it).
- unreal37 7y ago
  "A week" is a terrible estimate for complex things that have components that you can't foresee. If you lose "a day" on some problem outside of your control (compiling starts to fail and it turns out someone checked in some code into your branch by mistake), you've basically wasted 20% of your estimate. Never say a week when there's the chance something will require a month because you didn't understand it. You need to learn this lesson. A week is a blink of an eye in software, and only things you understand take a week.

danielbarla 7y ago

Nothing, inherently, except perhaps the fallacy of comparing a pair of jeans to the rather chaotic and unpredictable world of bespoke systems development. One is inherently known (a pair of jeans you've presumably already manufactured), the other is one big unknown, basically.

ellius 7y ago
Aircraft, hospitals, hotels — a million complex bespoke things are built every day. Cost and time projections are inevitable.
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > Cost and time projections are inevitable. As inevitable as blowing through the projections.
commandlinefan 7y ago
Right. You can imagine a conversation something like: "Ok, how long is this project going to take?" "Well, it's still being defined..." "What do you mean you refuse to tell me how long this project is going to take?" The analogy is so ridiculous that the person making it clearly doesn't even comprehend the domain he's discussing.
ben509 7y ago
He compared to jeans because they're an extremely trivial purchase that someone would give little thought to, but still demand to know what they cost. The point is that in all cases you need that information, with a major software project you simply need it far more.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > you need And that's the core of the problem (which, ironically in the context of the article, agile methodologies were supposed to address): wanting or needing something to be true/exist doesn't make it so.

mstade 7y ago

I think maybe the point they're trying to make is that comparing a software development project that may include a number of unknowns to buying a pair of jeans where there are probably very few if any unknowns is fallacious and a waste of time. That said, I don't think it's black and white. Some projects, making a simple web site that follows whatever Squarespace template is popular and filling it with some relevant content can be a pretty simple project, even to the point where the buying a pair of jeans comparison makes more sense. The problem, I suppose, is when you believe strongly that every project can be accurately priced up front. Not every project is a moonshot, but some truly are and it's not always obvious up front which ones are.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
lonelappde 7y ago
And every engineer likes to pretend that their project is a moonshot. If you are inventing something incredible,why are you someone's employee instead of getting capital investment or self-financing from your last achievements?
- asark 7y ago
  It is when stakeholders throw curveballs. "We want you to do this." "Sweet, easy enough, I'll just use X, Y and Z, no problem." "Oh but sorry you have to use A, B, and C instead. Oh and it'll need to connect to D for reporting, and we'd like it to sync with E which we've never done but they have an API so it can't be too hard, right? Oh and it needs to fit this design we've already approved that's about as far from native to the platform you're developing for as it could be and has a ton of UX issues that require fundamental changes to fix, which you'll uncover as you work. That's about as easy, right?" "...." [EDIT] oh and also one "minor" feature we're going to toss in later is actually big enough to build an entire company around so you'll have to waste a bunch of time talking us down from that while we quietly lower our opinion of you, and we've accidentally described a few things which are basically impossible by egregiously violating e.g. CAP theorem or being what's effectively a highly-available distributed filesystem that needs to fit without our timeframe and budget, which is 1/20 what it would take to maybe build that and that alone.

twic 7y ago

Writing software is design, not manufacturing [1]. Do companies know accurately in advance how much it will cost to design a new nuclear power plant, aircraft carrier, or jet engine? [1] http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2.htm http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2...

apatters 7y ago
There are times when something truly original is being built and it's a valid argument for estimate uncertainty. But a significant portion of the industry is engaged in building CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17, and a significant percentage of estimates end up wrong because some developer who was bored with his job decided to use a blingy new Javascript framework he had no experience with because he wanted a challenge. Money gets lit on fire again and again this way and it's frankly selfish and irresponsible.
- learc83 7y ago
  If the software is truly that unoriginal, use something off the shelf. The issue is that in literally every non-toy product I've every been involved in the product owners will always turn CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17 into something significantly more custom and much more complex. >because some developer who was bored with his job decided to use a blingy new Javascript framework he had no experience with because he wanted a challenge. That definitely happens, but I think it's a different problem.
  - asark 7y ago
    > The issue is that in literally every non-toy product I've every been involved in the product owners will always turn CRUD app #237 or Ho-Hum SaaS #17 into something significantly more custom and much more complex. YES! The cost of custom-everything design and bespoke gee-whiz is vastly under-appreciated, IMO. CRUDy Android and iOS apps using built-in widgets and simple color theming? Relatively easy to estimate, and pretty damn fast. Custom-everything, we want both to look pretty similar (so, probably Material-ish given current trends, which you'd think would come for free at least on Android but... doesn't), custom animations everywhere, oh I hate that default date picker on this particular Samsung phone (and sure, it's god-awful) can we customize it, and the designer came up with this layout for this form that requires all kinds of twisty-bendy manipulation to reproduce versus something more straightforward but that's what the "stakeholders" approved so let's do that. Et c. et c. and pretty soon the app's 10x as expensive (no exaggeration!) because you couldn't live with the easiest-for-the-user-anyway default styles with some custom coloring. And the Web's at least as bad. Often you're also making your page way less usable and breaking it on certain browser/device combos due to the extra effort you put in to make it "pretty", at great cost. [EDIT] in fact I've in the past suggested providing design points for "pretty gee-whiz versus not-actually-bad straightforward implementation" to make product owners choose between getting e.g. three normal (and OK-looking but not "pretty") features or one pretty feature in a sprint, to make this cost more visible and give owners on a budget more flexibility in shipping features, but it never caught on—in particular designers hate, hate, hate the idea, I think because it might expose that their work is sometimes (often...) more expensive than it's worth (and vastly more expensive than they're being paid, since it also eats huge amounts of developer time) given you've got some developers with even a hint of aesthetic and UX sense on a project.

ALittleLight 7y ago

"How long will X take?" "I don't know, I've never done X before." "Yeah, yeah. It doesn't have to be perfect analysis, just a rough idea for scheduling. Not written in stone, ha ha." "Uh, a week?" "Okay, great, so if I say 8 days you should have it done by then?" "Yeah, I hope so." "Great, thanks." Day 3: actually doing X requires unforeseen Y and Z which will each take a month. "We need to add Y and Z to the schedule, which will each take a month." "There's no room for that in the schedule." "Then I can't do X" "We've already costed X and committed to it. We've got to do X. We need to make X happen. When can you get back to me with a path to green for X? And also, let's schedule a post-mortem to figure out why we missed on X." At the post-mortem, PM doesn't show up: "Uh, turns out we missed on X because I estimated it too quickly and the PM committed to those estimates. I didn't know about Y and Z when estimating, and these are things I could have done to detect them as requirements if I had known to do so." Email from PM: "Hey, could you give me an estimate for X'? Doesn't have to be perfect, ha ha."

ant_li0n 7y ago
Yes. This happens at my shop all the time and it's absolutely terrible. Each sprint starts out positive and ends with panic attacks.
- asark 7y ago
  I've solved this by not panicking about software someone else owns. Worked out OK so far. They can fix their processes and expectations (I'll help!) to get more value out of me, or choose not to. Not my problem. Environment gets too toxic, well, see ya, and good luck (you'll need it).
unreal37 7y ago
"A week" is a terrible estimate for complex things that have components that you can't foresee. If you lose "a day" on some problem outside of your control (compiling starts to fail and it turns out someone checked in some code into your branch by mistake), you've basically wasted 20% of your estimate. Never say a week when there's the chance something will require a month because you didn't understand it. You need to learn this lesson. A week is a blink of an eye in software, and only things you understand take a week.