3 ms·

> when I try to impose my timelines on my team As a senior developer, I don't like this sentence. If you want an estimate on a certain job, you ask your team.

> when I try to impose my timelines on my team As a senior developer, I don't like this sentence. If you want an estimate on a certain job, you ask your team. If you want to know what can be done in a fixed time-frame, you ask your team. I don't take "imposed" timelines well. In such scenario's, I make it very clear who is at fault when deadlines are not met (hint: it's not me or my fellow developers). When you push back on this, I will ask who made this unrealistic estimate. Ah? You mean the people who know the least of the work made the estimate? Well, then it's normal the deadline was shit, no? Maybe next time, ask the developers, they probably are the best at making estimates of their work. When you say "gut" feeling of developers, you probably mean the instant reaction they give when you tell them the timeline. Well, it can't be "informed" because you didn't ask them to make an estimate did you? Developers need time making an estimate. "Gut" feeling is probably your developers thinking "WTF?!?!?!?". I always educate my managers on who makes the estimates, how much time it takes to make the estimate, and how estimates and deadlines are not the same. I hope you also have a senior developer under you who can educate you on this topic ;).

MereInterest 6y ago
My "aha" moment on this was realizing the difference between estimations and commitments. If there is some probability distribution of how long a task will take, an estimation gets the median of that distribution. On the other hand, a commitment gets at least the 95th percentile of that distribution. Estimations are useful for general scheduling and resource management, while commitments are useful for having others waiting to get started as soon as a task is finished. The biggest problem I run into is people not being clear (or not knowing themselves) whether they are asking for an estimation or a commitment. "How long do you think X will take?" sure sounds like a request for an estimation, but if they follow it up with "Great, I'll tell the customer it will be done by then.", they clearly were looking for a commitment instead.

MereInterest 6y ago

My "aha" moment on this was realizing the difference between estimations and commitments. If there is some probability distribution of how long a task will take, an estimation gets the median of that distribution. On the other hand, a commitment gets at least the 95th percentile of that distribution. Estimations are useful for general scheduling and resource management, while commitments are useful for having others waiting to get started as soon as a task is finished. The biggest problem I run into is people not being clear (or not knowing themselves) whether they are asking for an estimation or a commitment. "How long do you think X will take?" sure sounds like a request for an estimation, but if they follow it up with "Great, I'll tell the customer it will be done by then.", they clearly were looking for a commitment instead.