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An estimate is guess but is never treated that way. Budgets are built on it, deliveries agreed. Doesn't matter how much you decompose the task - unless you've
by brainwipe 5y ago
An estimate is guess but is never treated that way.
Budgets are built on it, deliveries agreed. Doesn't matter how much you decompose the task - unless you've coded that exact same thing many times before in the same way under the same conditions then it's just a guess. Been estimating for industry for about 20 years (although not the last 6 because we're agile in the truest sense) and most of the estimates have been wrong - sometimes over, sometimes under. Tech estimates are a lie that loads buy into.
- commandlinefan 5y ago> An estimate is guess It took me a long time to internalize that. See, there's an implied threat - "esitmate correctly or we'll replace you with somebody who will." And believe me, given the mentality of your average project manager, it would be "we'll have you executed first" if executing people who didn't do what you told them to do weren't against the law. What I finally realized was that the implicit threat was a hollow one - there's nobody out there who can do it either, and they know that, as much as they ball up their fists and gnash their teeth when you deliver "late".
- brainwipe 5y agoYou're right that there is an implied threat. I've seen work go offshore because there was a dev team to the east that said yes. They said yes to everything. They said yes even though they didn't understand the problem. Yes yes yes. A year later the project was dropped because all that yes was just another lie. Lots of managerial egg on faces and the customers went elsewhere. That kind of management just wants a lie so that they can apportion blame. They're not actually interested in getting a good bit of kit out the door.