3 ms·

Basically the author is lamenting that estimations are NEVER accurate enough. I've not known a dev who made accurate enough estimations to avoid a crunch. It d

Basically the author is lamenting that estimations are NEVER accurate enough. I've not known a dev who made accurate enough estimations to avoid a crunch. It does seem like the responders have a little bit too much sunk cost in the whole famously fraught agile thing to understand critique of it unbiased. It's fine in theory but does have flaws.

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
One flavor of agile (XP) says that estimates longer than 3 weeks diverge from reality too much. If you want to be able to estimate accurately, you must break it down until every task's estimate is less than 3 weeks. That doesn't give you an accurate estimate, but it does usually give you a less inaccurate one.
ghaff 4y ago
I'd probably argue that any accurate estimate almost has to have some slack built in. For any task of any complexity, especially one requiring coordination, things rarely go more easily and quickly than you expect. Far more likely, you run into problems or you really need to talk to a person about something and they're on vacation.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> I've not known a dev who made accurate enough estimations to avoid a crunch. And yet after three years at my first job, I could easily do a quick breakdown on a project, assign a three level complexity to each step (easy, medium, hard), put an amount of days corresponding to the selected complexity (to be reviewed after each project), add 25% for unforeseen events and contingency and my estimates were accurate enough most of the time. It is not difficult to properly do rough estimates. Most developers just refuse to invest the time necessary to do it properly and sadly for some as the answers here already illustrate I do believe it’s because they think of themselves as special snowflake rather than team player.

3 ms·

Basically the author is lamenting that estimations are NEVER accurate enough. I've not known a dev who made accurate enough estimations to avoid a crunch. It d

by stemlord 4y ago

AnimalMuppet 4y ago
One flavor of agile (XP) says that estimates longer than 3 weeks diverge from reality too much. If you want to be able to estimate accurately, you must break it down until every task's estimate is less than 3 weeks. That doesn't give you an accurate estimate, but it does usually give you a less inaccurate one.
ghaff 4y ago
I'd probably argue that any accurate estimate almost has to have some slack built in. For any task of any complexity, especially one requiring coordination, things rarely go more easily and quickly than you expect. Far more likely, you run into problems or you really need to talk to a person about something and they're on vacation.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> I've not known a dev who made accurate enough estimations to avoid a crunch. And yet after three years at my first job, I could easily do a quick breakdown on a project, assign a three level complexity to each step (easy, medium, hard), put an amount of days corresponding to the selected complexity (to be reviewed after each project), add 25% for unforeseen events and contingency and my estimates were accurate enough most of the time. It is not difficult to properly do rough estimates. Most developers just refuse to invest the time necessary to do it properly and sadly for some as the answers here already illustrate I do believe it’s because they think of themselves as special snowflake rather than team player.