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> engineers frequently assume the best-case scenario for their time estimates, while managers end up planning for the worst-case scenario I (engineer) have exp
by wool_gather 6y ago
> engineers frequently assume the best-case scenario for their time estimates, while managers end up planning for the worst-case scenario
I (engineer) have experienced exactly the opposite. On Thursday I say "It will most likely take me a week; I cannot possibly have it done in less than three days; if X is true -- which I can't know yet -- it will be more like two weeks". And that becomes a commitment to have the code on master by next Wednesday.
Perhaps I've just been unfortunate, but most of the time when I have given qualified or worst-case scenarios, I have been pressed to assume the best, and that's what gets written down.
- mod 6y agoI want to chime in that I, also a developer, mostly experienced the opposite. I hated giving time estimates, they were demanded, and sometimes when I overshot the optimistic time, managers were incredulous. Very few people involved understand how difficult it is to estimate work for some/most projects. If you haven't explored the problem space pretty well, you can and will run into problems that are unique and very troublesome. And you can't know that ahead of time, except in a very hand-wavy way.