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Just say how long you will think it will take realistically. Project managers don't usually understand the code. Be as honest as you can be. Somebody somewhere

Just say how long you will think it will take realistically. Project managers don't usually understand the code. Be as honest as you can be. Somebody somewhere said that: "Estimate the time it takes to finish the project. Then multiply that by 8" Surprisingly, this usually lands in the correct estimate. Best advice ever.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago
"we don't have time for that. You're a rockstar. Make it happen".
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  "You don't have time for me not to do it. I'm a rockstar. Listen to me." Yeah, I know that it's not likely to work...
  - JeremyMorgan 12y ago
    Sometimes it does. It's the battle that every developer, especially leads, will face quite often in this career.
- inDigiNeous 12y ago
  That's the most bullshit line you hear in companies. Sometimes we can make it happen, and ship code, but then most of the time somebody has to go in and fix it later to actually be extendable and work in other places than the original use-case.. It doesn't make sense in the long run to do this "fix, patch, fix, patch" non-sense .. but still companies need to ship shit to some deadline, so we do it.
UK-AL 12y ago
Depends on the culture of the workplace if this will work. If they have many developers, who really underestimate but always end up over the deadline all the time. Then you give an estimate thats double, your gonna look bad even if your dead on. And they're going to try to push that estimate down. 80% of workplaces are like that. I think its the incentives of billable hours that does this. They want low estimates, so they can win the work at all costs. They have to do it because other companies also underestimate. That or they think pressure motivates developers, but it really results in terrible code. I personally advocate using accurate estimates, then applying a discount if you have to.
- inDigiNeous 12y ago
  Did you know you can change that culture? Underestimating is very common with programmers, yeah, because they think they can do it in the given time, but in reality that almost never happens, at least to my experience. What is an accurate estimate ? It changes all the time when new pitfalls and problems are discovered during the development cycle. So accurate estimate is something that almost all the time more than the original estimate, if you think logically. So better to just multiply by some factor that is realistic.
Bahamut 12y ago
I usually multiply how long I think it would take to do a task by three - it has not failed me.
- inDigiNeous 12y ago
  Three is a nice multiplier too. Just after I posted this I started to think about it, 8 might be too much, but on complex projects with many developers, it's not even so far fetched, there's always things that we cannot see before we start to work on those, a task that takes on our mind 1-2 days might take up to 2 weeks easily if there is some problem that is not solvable right away.

JeremyMorgan 12y ago

"we don't have time for that. You're a rockstar. Make it happen".

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
"You don't have time for me not to do it. I'm a rockstar. Listen to me." Yeah, I know that it's not likely to work...
- JeremyMorgan 12y ago
  Sometimes it does. It's the battle that every developer, especially leads, will face quite often in this career.
inDigiNeous 12y ago
That's the most bullshit line you hear in companies. Sometimes we can make it happen, and ship code, but then most of the time somebody has to go in and fix it later to actually be extendable and work in other places than the original use-case.. It doesn't make sense in the long run to do this "fix, patch, fix, patch" non-sense .. but still companies need to ship shit to some deadline, so we do it.

UK-AL 12y ago

Depends on the culture of the workplace if this will work. If they have many developers, who really underestimate but always end up over the deadline all the time. Then you give an estimate thats double, your gonna look bad even if your dead on. And they're going to try to push that estimate down. 80% of workplaces are like that. I think its the incentives of billable hours that does this. They want low estimates, so they can win the work at all costs. They have to do it because other companies also underestimate. That or they think pressure motivates developers, but it really results in terrible code. I personally advocate using accurate estimates, then applying a discount if you have to.

inDigiNeous 12y ago
Did you know you can change that culture? Underestimating is very common with programmers, yeah, because they think they can do it in the given time, but in reality that almost never happens, at least to my experience. What is an accurate estimate ? It changes all the time when new pitfalls and problems are discovered during the development cycle. So accurate estimate is something that almost all the time more than the original estimate, if you think logically. So better to just multiply by some factor that is realistic.

Bahamut 12y ago

I usually multiply how long I think it would take to do a task by three - it has not failed me.

inDigiNeous 12y ago
Three is a nice multiplier too. Just after I posted this I started to think about it, 8 might be too much, but on complex projects with many developers, it's not even so far fetched, there's always things that we cannot see before we start to work on those, a task that takes on our mind 1-2 days might take up to 2 weeks easily if there is some problem that is not solvable right away.