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I gotta tell you that unless you're working with absolute bozos, nobody is looking at estimates and saying "oh duh, I am betting the farm this will complete on
by dagw 5y ago
I gotta tell you that unless you're working with absolute bozos, nobody is looking at estimates and saying "oh duh, I am betting the farm this will complete on that date."
Happens all the time, and not just by bozos. Sometimes getting paid is entirely dependent on delivering when you said you would. I used to work at an animation studio and one year we worked on a series of Christmas themed TV spots. When we said we could deliver on time we where very much betting the farm our estimates where correct. Nobody is paying to air those in February.
- radicaldreamer 5y agoSimilar story, in a larger firm. There are internal incentives where teams are compared against each other and a lot of it hinges on delivering things when a team said it would. This leads to all sorts of strategies to make that happen: from cutting corners, to underpromising, to padding estimates. In the end, the sum of it all is that nobody is able to paint an accurate picture of the capabilities of teams overall because everything is so heavily skewed by internal incentives and competition.
- cratermoon 5y agoBut they are bozos if they give you a task they want done for Christmas, you tell them that it will likely not complete until February, and they say, "well, just work harder/extra hours/hire more people", which is pretty common. The way to avoid bozo-land is for the person asking to come back with "well, what can you confidently complete in time for Christmas?", and plan for that.
- listenallyall 5y agoThat's not an estimate, it's a deadline. Different concepts.
- _y5hn 5y agoNot really. You have to estimate within the deadline. Estimates are often required due to such dependencies.
- dagw 5y agoSurely a deadline is just an estimate you bet the farm on :)
- geon 5y agoNo. You would make your own estimation. If the result is November 1, +- 2 days, you can bet the farm. If the result is December 22, +- 14 days, you should pass.