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Meh ... give people what they want. "I cannot estimate Z" is a refusal and I would suggest an ego-driven one. I would just say "between 1 and 12 months", or som
by jefc1111 4y ago
Meh ... give people what they want. "I cannot estimate Z" is a refusal and I would suggest an ego-driven one. I would just say "between 1 and 12 months", or something like that. If they were then not happy with that I would go into why that is the best I can manage given the circumstances.
"failure by the manager to take the point on board" is not relevant really when you think of the manager's perspective. From their perspective they have a contractor refusing to do what they are asked.
- mojzu 4y agoI've not found vague estimates to work very well at all in this scenario. Managers will just continually ask for something more specific, they want a particular date they can remember/write down/enter into some project management software.
- creshal 4y agoUsually I'll just go with "by date X we can give a reasonable estimate", which tends to work well enough with their mental model that they leave us alone until X.
- jefc1111 4y agoYeah that's a good pragmatic approach. "I can't estimate that right now but if I spend half a day on it I can give you a figure".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zen_1 4y ago> "I cannot estimate Z" is a refusal and I would suggest an ego-driven one. This might come down to a cultural difference or difference in communication styles. As an IC, I'd consider it to be much more honest on my part to be upfront about unknown timelines instead of providing a (quite frankly, useless) estimate just because it's what my manager wants to hear. At the end of the day, the work will take as long as it takes (managerial interference aside), and I believe in underpromising and overdelivering, precisely to avoid situations where someone's on the hook for an estimate that didn't pan out. If I wanted my business to be making accurate projections, I'd have been a quant.