3 ms·
The problem is no one has locked you in the closet - just open the door and look around. Heck, you have a whole hour to look around the house and estimate how
by tlianza 15y ago
The problem is no one has locked you in the closet - just open the door and look around. Heck, you have a whole hour to look around the house and estimate how long it takes to build the thing.
You are limited by how long you can spend inspecting every nook and cranny of something, but you're only limited by time. The "door" metaphor is misleading. Nothing is standing in your way from exploring the space.
If you can find the "hard parts" of the house faster than someone else, you're likely to be a better estimator. In fact, my favorite trick is to focus on one hard part and extrapolate up. For example, write down how tricky it is to build the kitchen, or heck just a cabinet in the kitchen, so everyone gets it when you say "oh, by the way, there are 10 more rooms."
- noonespecial 15y agoAt Bigco, you can't start opening doors until you give them your estimate and get it approved. There's no way to know how many more doors in how many more rooms there will be until you've been in all the rooms and opened all of the doors. Its fractal. That "last" door could lead to 100 more. Oh and its almost always a horror flick with axe wielding maniacs(1) and booby traps(2) in each room intent on your destruction. (1) The boss's boss's nephew who's a "computer whiz". (2) $300,000 "developer tools" you have to use by fiat policy because, dammit, we spent a lot of money on them.