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I spent a few years working in a project (program?) management office as an administrative assistant. Somewhere in there, I announced to my manager that I had

by vba616 3y ago

I spent a few years working in a project (program?) management office as an administrative assistant. Somewhere in there, I announced to my manager that I had figured out how to accurately estimate the time a project would take - of course historically we had all sorts of overruns. I had reviewed records of hundreds of past IT projects and found that they averaged a nice round 2x estimates. Therefore, obviously, a simple methodology of evaluating all known factors as usual and doubling the result would lead to dramatically better planning and resource usage. But...you can't just do that, any more than you can simply walk into Mordor.

Falkon1313 3y ago
Early in my career, I once worked with someone who estimated 40 hours for anything and everything, every single time. Need to change some text here? "Well, it's a complex system and we'll have to think about translations and if the same text is used anywhere else, whether it will affect the layout, etc., etc. - 40 hours." Need to build a whole new system from scratch? "Well, we have experience in that and it's a small enough data set and we have tools to help us - 40 hours." If it was a trivial change, then they had most of the week free to do whatever. If it was a huge project, then they'd go back and say "We need to reduce scope. They said they wanted X, but that actually wouldn't be good for them because of Y. We shouldn't do that, and they'll be glad we didn't." Somehow, this one person always managed hit their estimates spot-on, every time. This was a model employee. Depending on the company and your management, and how well you can BS, you can simply walk into Mordor whenever you feel like it.
- vba616 3y ago
  Well...I mean it's a logical conundrum because if you take the timeframe you can justify and double it, by definition you can't justify half of the time it will take. On the other hand, a minimum amount of time required for a project seems to be well accepted by project managers and others.

by vba616 3y ago

Falkon1313 3y ago

Early in my career, I once worked with someone who estimated 40 hours for anything and everything, every single time. Need to change some text here? "Well, it's a complex system and we'll have to think about translations and if the same text is used anywhere else, whether it will affect the layout, etc., etc. - 40 hours." Need to build a whole new system from scratch? "Well, we have experience in that and it's a small enough data set and we have tools to help us - 40 hours." If it was a trivial change, then they had most of the week free to do whatever. If it was a huge project, then they'd go back and say "We need to reduce scope. They said they wanted X, but that actually wouldn't be good for them because of Y. We shouldn't do that, and they'll be glad we didn't." Somehow, this one person always managed hit their estimates spot-on, every time. This was a model employee. Depending on the company and your management, and how well you can BS, you can simply walk into Mordor whenever you feel like it.

vba616 3y ago
Well...I mean it's a logical conundrum because if you take the timeframe you can justify and double it, by definition you can't justify half of the time it will take. On the other hand, a minimum amount of time required for a project seems to be well accepted by project managers and others.