4 ms·

I don’t disagree but is the alternative unbounded dev where you write code until it’s perfect? That doesn’t sound like a better business outcome. The trade off

by grvdrm 6mo ago

I don’t disagree but is the alternative unbounded dev where you write code until it’s perfect? That doesn’t sound like a better business outcome. The trade off can’t be “take as long as you want”

dylan604 6mo ago
Some coding doesn't fit your schedule. If you've scheduled 2 weeks, but it takes 3, then it takes 3. Scheduling it to take 2 does nothing to actually make the coding faster.
- grvdrm 6mo ago
  3 sounds fine. Then I ask: why not add a week to how long that thing will take, meaning it stretches two sprints (or whatever you call it). Add upfront. Then if you get to hard convo where someone says “do it sooner” you say “not possible.”
  - DrewADesign 6mo ago
    The fundamental problem remains: it’s difficult to predict how long it will take to solve a series of puzzles. I worked in a dev group where we’d take the happy path estimate and double it… it didn’t help much. So often I’d think something would take me a week, so two walls was allotted, but I made a discovery in my first like hour/day whatever that reduced the dev time to like a couple days. Then, there were tasks that I thought I’d solve in a few days that took me weeks because I couldn’t foresee some series of problems to overcome. Taking a guess and adding time to it just shifts the endpoint of the guess. That didn’t help us much.
    - grvdrm 6mo ago
      That's the point I am making, and the point of asking "what is the alternative" Developers aren't alone in adhering to schedules. Many folks in many roles do it. All deal with missed deadlines, success, expectation management, etc. No one operates in magical no-timeline land unless they do not at all answer to anyone or any user. Not the predominant model, right? So rather than just say "you can blame the PMs" I'd love to hear a realistic-to-business flow idea. I am not saying I have the answers or a "take". I've both asked for and been asked for estimates and many times told people "I can't estimate that because I don't know what will happen along the way." So, it's not just PMs. It's the whole system. Is there a real solution or are we pretending there might be? Honest inquiry.
      - dylan604 6mo ago
        Software release dates are so arbitrary though. We no longer make physical media that needs time to make and ship. Why does software need to be released on February 15th instead of March 7th?
        wat10000 6mo ago
        You could ask the same question about the contents of the release. Why does software need to be released with features X, Y, and Z on March 7th when it could be released with features X and Y on February 15th? It's inevitable that work will slip. That doesn't necessarily mean the release will slip. Sometimes you actually need the thing, but often the work is something you want to include in the release but don't absolutely have to. Then you can decide which tradeoff you prefer, delaying the release or reducing its scope.
        grvdrm 6mo ago
        This is the direction of my thinking, too. Earlier discussion focuses on writing software at a slower pace to inject more accuracy and robust thinking/design/code. Conceptually, yes, I get it! But in numerous practical scenarios, some adherence to a recurring schedule seems like the only way to align software to business outcomes. My thinking is tied more to enterprise products (both external and internal) rather than open-source. I like an active dialog with engineers. (I'm neither SWE nor PM). Let's talk together about estimates. What's possible and not possible. Where do you feel most uncertain, most certain. What dependencies/externalities do you expect to cause problems. Those conversations help me (business/analytics-side) do things like adjust my own deadlines, schedules. Communicate with c-suite to realign on what's possible and not. Adjust time.
        DrewADesign 6mo ago
        The main problem I’ve had is the unpredictability of where the complexity lies. Unless you’ve done exactly what you’re doing, before, with the same tools and requirements, there’s a good chance that some discrete trivial aspect could take up an incredible amount of time, and that won’t indicate whether the main goal will take more or less time. I’ve worked both as a developer and as a designer, and while some aspects of design can be really nebulous and uncertain compared to dev work, it lacks some of the unpredictability — it’s not like I’m going to unexpectedly have to re-make the logo. I feel for anyone that has to wrangle these tasks into a business-consumable time frame.
  - dylan604 6mo ago
    You assume that PMs will just accept whatever estimate you give and not just say 2 weeks from the off and refuse to budge.
    - grvdrm 6mo ago
      So, could you say "ok, but I still can't do that"
      - noisy_boy 6mo ago
        In this day and age of code-in-bulk enabled by AI, they will find someone who does in a blink of an eye.
stouset 6mo ago
“The alternative is that nothing will ever get released because devs will take forever making it perfect” is a really lame take. We have literally countless examples of software that devs have released entirely of their own volition when they felt it was ready. If anything, in my experience, software that’s written a little slower and to a higher standard of quality is faster-releasing in the long (and medium) run. You’d be shocked at how productive your developers are when they aren’t task-switching every thirty minutes to put out fires, or when feature work isn’t constantly burdened by having to upend unrelated parts of the code due to hopelessly interwoven design.
- grvdrm 6mo ago
  I'm happy to be reoriented with examples. Please provide some? You said countless but mentioned none.
  - mrgoldenbrown 6mo ago
    tex was pretty bug free.
  - usefulcat 6mo ago
    I'd say SQLite is one good example: https://sqlite.org/chronology.html https://sqlite.org/chronology.html Regular releases for over a quarter of a century now, and it's renowned for its reliability.
noisy_boy 6mo ago
I think PMs fail to understand categories of change in terms of complexity because they focus on the user facing surface and deal in timelines. A change that brings in a big feature can be straightforward because it perfectly fits the existing landscape. A seemingly trivial change can have lot of complexities that are hard to predict in terms of timelines. There is also the angle of asking for estimate without allocating time for estimation itself. For lack of a better word, I think it should drive from "complexity". Hardness of estimate should be inversely proportional to the complexity. Adding field to a UI when it is also exposed via the API is generally low complexity so my estimate would likely hold. We can provide estimate for a major change but the estimate would be soft and subject to stretch and it is the role of the PM to communicate it accordingly to the stakeholders.

by grvdrm 6mo ago

dylan604 6mo ago

Some coding doesn't fit your schedule. If you've scheduled 2 weeks, but it takes 3, then it takes 3. Scheduling it to take 2 does nothing to actually make the coding faster.

grvdrm 6mo ago
3 sounds fine. Then I ask: why not add a week to how long that thing will take, meaning it stretches two sprints (or whatever you call it). Add upfront. Then if you get to hard convo where someone says “do it sooner” you say “not possible.”
- DrewADesign 6mo ago
  The fundamental problem remains: it’s difficult to predict how long it will take to solve a series of puzzles. I worked in a dev group where we’d take the happy path estimate and double it… it didn’t help much. So often I’d think something would take me a week, so two walls was allotted, but I made a discovery in my first like hour/day whatever that reduced the dev time to like a couple days. Then, there were tasks that I thought I’d solve in a few days that took me weeks because I couldn’t foresee some series of problems to overcome. Taking a guess and adding time to it just shifts the endpoint of the guess. That didn’t help us much.
  - grvdrm 6mo ago
    That's the point I am making, and the point of asking "what is the alternative" Developers aren't alone in adhering to schedules. Many folks in many roles do it. All deal with missed deadlines, success, expectation management, etc. No one operates in magical no-timeline land unless they do not at all answer to anyone or any user. Not the predominant model, right? So rather than just say "you can blame the PMs" I'd love to hear a realistic-to-business flow idea. I am not saying I have the answers or a "take". I've both asked for and been asked for estimates and many times told people "I can't estimate that because I don't know what will happen along the way." So, it's not just PMs. It's the whole system. Is there a real solution or are we pretending there might be? Honest inquiry.
    - dylan604 6mo ago
      Software release dates are so arbitrary though. We no longer make physical media that needs time to make and ship. Why does software need to be released on February 15th instead of March 7th?
      - wat10000 6mo ago
        You could ask the same question about the contents of the release. Why does software need to be released with features X, Y, and Z on March 7th when it could be released with features X and Y on February 15th? It's inevitable that work will slip. That doesn't necessarily mean the release will slip. Sometimes you actually need the thing, but often the work is something you want to include in the release but don't absolutely have to. Then you can decide which tradeoff you prefer, delaying the release or reducing its scope.
        grvdrm 6mo ago
        This is the direction of my thinking, too. Earlier discussion focuses on writing software at a slower pace to inject more accuracy and robust thinking/design/code. Conceptually, yes, I get it! But in numerous practical scenarios, some adherence to a recurring schedule seems like the only way to align software to business outcomes. My thinking is tied more to enterprise products (both external and internal) rather than open-source. I like an active dialog with engineers. (I'm neither SWE nor PM). Let's talk together about estimates. What's possible and not possible. Where do you feel most uncertain, most certain. What dependencies/externalities do you expect to cause problems. Those conversations help me (business/analytics-side) do things like adjust my own deadlines, schedules. Communicate with c-suite to realign on what's possible and not. Adjust time.
        DrewADesign 6mo ago
        The main problem I’ve had is the unpredictability of where the complexity lies. Unless you’ve done exactly what you’re doing, before, with the same tools and requirements, there’s a good chance that some discrete trivial aspect could take up an incredible amount of time, and that won’t indicate whether the main goal will take more or less time. I’ve worked both as a developer and as a designer, and while some aspects of design can be really nebulous and uncertain compared to dev work, it lacks some of the unpredictability — it’s not like I’m going to unexpectedly have to re-make the logo. I feel for anyone that has to wrangle these tasks into a business-consumable time frame.
- dylan604 6mo ago
  You assume that PMs will just accept whatever estimate you give and not just say 2 weeks from the off and refuse to budge.
  - grvdrm 6mo ago
    So, could you say "ok, but I still can't do that"
    - noisy_boy 6mo ago
      In this day and age of code-in-bulk enabled by AI, they will find someone who does in a blink of an eye.

stouset 6mo ago

“The alternative is that nothing will ever get released because devs will take forever making it perfect” is a really lame take. We have literally countless examples of software that devs have released entirely of their own volition when they felt it was ready. If anything, in my experience, software that’s written a little slower and to a higher standard of quality is faster-releasing in the long (and medium) run. You’d be shocked at how productive your developers are when they aren’t task-switching every thirty minutes to put out fires, or when feature work isn’t constantly burdened by having to upend unrelated parts of the code due to hopelessly interwoven design.

grvdrm 6mo ago
I'm happy to be reoriented with examples. Please provide some? You said countless but mentioned none.
- mrgoldenbrown 6mo ago
  tex was pretty bug free.
- usefulcat 6mo ago
  I'd say SQLite is one good example: https://sqlite.org/chronology.html https://sqlite.org/chronology.html Regular releases for over a quarter of a century now, and it's renowned for its reliability.

noisy_boy 6mo ago

I think PMs fail to understand categories of change in terms of complexity because they focus on the user facing surface and deal in timelines. A change that brings in a big feature can be straightforward because it perfectly fits the existing landscape. A seemingly trivial change can have lot of complexities that are hard to predict in terms of timelines. There is also the angle of asking for estimate without allocating time for estimation itself. For lack of a better word, I think it should drive from "complexity". Hardness of estimate should be inversely proportional to the complexity. Adding field to a UI when it is also exposed via the API is generally low complexity so my estimate would likely hold. We can provide estimate for a major change but the estimate would be soft and subject to stretch and it is the role of the PM to communicate it accordingly to the stakeholders.