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Estimation often is way off for construction projects, but would you hire a contractor who refused to hazard a guess of how long a job would take or how much it
by emodendroket 4y ago
Estimation often is way off for construction projects, but would you hire a contractor who refused to hazard a guess of how long a job would take or how much it would cost?
- gilbetron 4y agoConstructions remains a terrible analogy for software development, as it always has been.
- emodendroket 4y agoWould you agree to pay for any service where not even an estimate of the price could be given? I guess healthcare is the only example I can think of where anyone consents to that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- davemp 4y agoEstimates you get are what the estimator thinks you will pay (mostly) not how much it costs them. Prices in the real world are barely linked to costs. Budget risks are bundled in markets with high variance.
- emodendroket 4y agoEven to the extent that is true it doesn’t change my argument at all.
- davemp 4y agoMaybe I don't see the relevance of your question then. Software developers are not negotiating fixed price contracts with their project managers every two weeks. Just how toxic such a situation would be should be obvious. Managers need to understand the context of the job and determine if they're satisfied with the productivity of their employees. Agile is a development process not a contract pricing strategy. If anything proponents of "Agile" would be more hesitant to quote you a firm fixed price contract than "Waterfall" teams.
- emodendroket 4y agoThey don’t have to hire you every two weeks but they are paying for you and do have to decide how to allocate your time and plan various projects with interlocking dependencies. How can they do that without even a rough idea of how many people it takes for how long to accomplish anything? You are, in effect, still asking them to write you a blank check to accomplish something when they might want to change gears if apprised of how difficult it is.
- davemp 4y ago> How can they do that without even a rough idea of how many people it takes for how long to accomplish anything? This is not exclusive to scrum.
- emodendroket 4y agoIf you go way back up in this thread the reason given for Scrum being bad is it features estimation, which is useless because it's inaccurate, so telling me that systems other than Scrum feature estimation is not a rebuttal.
- davemp 3y agoThis is not really a discussion in good faith. > the reason given for Scrum being bad is it features estimation This seems like a strawman and not at all what I was picking up from further up the thread. --- https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- emodendroket 3y agoCan you tell me how I was supposed to interpret “it is impossible to do good estimation” as a criticism of Scrum, then?
- flappyeagle 4y agoResearch. We’re researching cures to cancer, nuclear fusion, space flight, etc. with no idea what the total cost of ownership will be. Software dev can resemble research on a smaller scale. The more interesting or complex your requirements and environment, the closer it resembles research. The original point of agile was to lean into this fact and get out of planning and predicting. Scrum culture has corrupted this goal.
- emodendroket 4y agoYeah it turns out if your object is having working software to use to make money you’re not that interested in the mysteries of theory.
- nprateem 4y agoMost companies have already hired the contractor though so this little dance is just pointlessness that kills motivation and velocity.
- emodendroket 4y agoSurely an understanding of how much effort is needed to complete one project or another will inform their decisions of which to pursue.
- seanhunter 4y agoIf scrum provided that it might have some value. It’s extremely doubtful if you get even a roughly accurate estimate of effort within one project let alone relative effort across two.
- kqr 4y agoMeh. The time it takes to complete a project is usually somewhat flexible. What really matters is how valuable the project is. That is what needs to be estimated explicitly, and not just "I really like these two ideas lets do the cheaper one".
- emodendroket 4y agoHow can you estimate "value" without any idea what resources are needed or what else you will have to forgo to pursue the project?
- kqr 4y agoValue meaning roughly revenue, not profit.
- emodendroket 4y agoBut estimating revenue is just as much of a shot in the dark as estimating effort, and if the effort is great enough it will cancel out the revenue.
- rightbyte 4y agoAt some point there is a need for time estimates, ye. I don't ask contractors for a detailed breakdown, just the whole thing. And they either do a high padded fixed price or work per hour. A friend who is an elictrician might do 100 similar rooms in a building and they have a detailed breakdown of "time per screw" more or less. So I guess the accuracy depends on the sameness of tasks to do.
- ResearchCode 4y agoWould you hire a mathematician that doesn't "story point" conjectures? Yes. Would you hire one that does?
- emodendroket 4y agoI find this analogy harder to understand. What am I hiring the mathematician to do in this example?
- ResearchCode 4y agoResearch mathematics.
- emodendroket 4y agoDo you get paid to do research or is there a deliverable at the end?
- ResearchCode 3y agoYes, you get paid to do research and there are theorems delivered. Just like software projects, some never get delivered and you don't know when if they're not trivial.
- _heimdall 4y agoUnless the contractor is willing to put in writing a "not to exceed" price, I've never put any faith in build estimates. I'd expect a professional to be able to give a rough estimate based on experience and scope, as well as clear communication as the project progresses. Rough estimate meaning accurate withing something like 20-30%, not a detailed breakdown by ever project and material expense. I try to do the same in software projects. Estimating projects by hours is impossible, fibonnaci numbers are a meaningless abstraction, and spending time each sprint to discuss how it went, what the next sprint plan is and estimate every task is a waste of time. What I can say is whether a task looks like something that could be done in an afternoon, a few days, a few weeks, or multiple months. Accuracy there comes with experience, but no one gets better by chopping the calendar year into 2 week intervals and pouring a ton of process all over it.
- monkpit 4y agoContractors charge you based upon the value they provide you, not their costs and labor. A time estimate is reasonable to expect, though.
- emodendroket 4y agoDepends. Being billed by the hour is far from unheard of.