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This is such an important topic and missing skill in the tech workplace. It's impossible to prioritize work without estimating the cost & value of projects, an
by awinter-py 7y ago
This is such an important topic and missing skill in the tech workplace.
It's impossible to prioritize work without estimating the cost & value of projects, and teams that don't prioritize are always overworked, playing catchup and are unhappy.
What the author says about 'we shipped different functionality to what we planned' is really important too -- beginning managers aren't willing to have this conversation but scope de-creep is the only way to deliver quality work on-time.
It's not enough to play planning poker, you need to have ICs in the room for spec design and make time to identify & resolve unknowns before committing to features / timelines.
- shmundada 7y ago> make time to identify & resolve unknowns before committing to features / timelines. I find it difficult to identify unknowns before I actually start working on it. Personally it makes sense to just give it a go as estimating it correctly may be as time consuming as completing it. Especially true for one off feature or bugs in large codebase.
- awinter-py 7y agoThat's fine for smaller chunks of work, and you're right that resolving uncertainty is not cheap. But if you're doing resource planning for a large organization and you need to decide between high-value, long-timeline projects, that decision is irresponsible without some homework up front to validate the timelines. Large projects involve high- and low-uncertainty work and it's useful to do some of the former before spending resources on the latter. Your estimate still won't be right, probably, but the chance of uncovering an important problem is worth it.
- pas 7y agoAgreed. Usually the problem is that technical folks are involved too late. (They are the ones that actually think through the requirements after all.)