Why Can't Developers Estimate Time? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#101

Post by zedshaw » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

jdavid wrote: post #70

charlief wrote: post #24

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours. [La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly] Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want. Lt.…

This might work in StarFleet, but the problem is that if you promise a manager something repeatedly, by overestimating, they will start to assume you are padding your results. Having worked on scrum teams before, I find its a good structured way to have a dialog about how much work is left, and how long you expect it to take. So rather than saying an hour. You would say this is as easy as changing a diaper, or its as…

> the problem is that if you promise a manager something

The real problem is thinking of "estimates" as "promises" when really they're rough guesses. If you go around holding people to a guess as if it were some kind of gospel biblical contract then yes, they will lie their ass off to protect themselves. Combine that with the fact that most organizations attempt to control the platform used, computers used, monitor size, operating system, IDE, editors, revision control tools, languages, documentation systems, testing methodology, meeting requirements, pairing, and nearly everything they can, and you start to see the real problem is....

managers who don't know programming, motherfucker. :-)

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#102

Post by motters » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 6:34 PM UTC

The problem is that most software development is novel, so there are zero previous data points from which estimates can be derived.

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#103

Post by afterburner » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 7:47 PM UTC

michaelcampbell wrote: post #32

There are 2 sides to this, one of which is detailed in most comments below, and I see it from a lot of devs I work with but mainly the less experienced ones, and that is the eternal optimism issue. That's been covered a lot already, so no point in belaboring that. The OTHER side is that, at least given my experience in the financial software domain, managers don't WANT accurate estimates. They absolutely abhor them.…

"It's a win/win to provide sub-par product"

Only if sub-par means limited scope. If sub-par means buggy, you might damage your reputation.

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#104

Post by johngalt » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 7:58 PM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #101

jdavid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work in StarFleet, but the problem is that if you promise a manager something repeatedly, by overestimating, they will start to assume you are padding your results. Having worked on scrum teams before, I find its a good structured way to have a dialog about how much work is left, and how long you expect it to take. So rather than saying an hour. You would say this is as easy as changing a diaper, or its as…

> the problem is that if you promise a manager something The real problem is thinking of "estimates" as "promises" when really they're rough guesses. If you go around holding people to a guess as if it were some kind of gospel biblical contract then yes, they will lie their ass off to protect themselves. Combine that with the fact that most organizations attempt to control the platform used, computers used, monitor s…

My favorite is when conflicting estimates are asked for, then BOTH taken as promises. Manager ADD

Manager: "How quick can you get this done?"

MFer: "3months (assuming price is no object)"

Two weeks pass...

Manager: "Our budgets changed. How much $$ can we trim out of this project?"

MFer: "We can cut it in half, but that will triple our timeline."

Manager: "cut in half! Great!"

3months pass:

Manager: "Hey why are we behind? The big guys want an explanation why you aren't meeting your targets!"

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#105

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:34 PM UTC

netghost wrote: post #37

michaelcampbell wrote: post #32

There are 2 sides to this, one of which is detailed in most comments below, and I see it from a lot of devs I work with but mainly the less experienced ones, and that is the eternal optimism issue. That's been covered a lot already, so no point in belaboring that. The OTHER side is that, at least given my experience in the financial software domain, managers don't WANT accurate estimates. They absolutely abhor them.…

I think that one of the major problems people have when giving estimates is that developers realize there is a lot of uncertainty add in all of the "'making $#@! up' fudge factors, technical hurdles, cogitation and exploration time, etc.", and then managers mentally strip it out. The frustrating thing is that it means the uncertainty gets lost, and people just end of with a number, which managers may treat a fact, no…

[deleted]

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#106

Post by NY_USA_Hacker » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:39 PM UTC

jdavid wrote: post #70

charlief wrote: post #24

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you, but the Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours. [La Forge goes back to work; Scotty follows slowly] Scotty: Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want. Lt.…

This might work in StarFleet, but the problem is that if you promise a manager something repeatedly, by overestimating, they will start to assume you are padding your results. Having worked on scrum teams before, I find its a good structured way to have a dialog about how much work is left, and how long you expect it to take. So rather than saying an hour. You would say this is as easy as changing a diaper, or its as…

You are in part outlining the start of some standard methodology for project time estimates. That's the good news. The bad news is that, for cases of never done this before and this is totally new, the methodology makes no estimates!

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#107

Post by Natsu » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:50 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #49

A big part of the problem is that management often isn't interested in honest estimates. You can certainly find better practices in some organizations, but in many organizations, a certain team gets tasked with completing a certain assignment by an arbitrary deadline and no attempt is made to reconcile the triple constraints with reality. In a context like that, developers may not be asked to make estimates, and if t…

> The good news for both developers and managers is that estimation is a learnable skill. If you get in the habit of making estimates and testing them, you'll get better amazingly fast. See the classic book

It's not hard to learn to make reasonable estimates. Even for unknown problems, I can often say that X has usually taken about Y time in the past and be right most of the time.

The real problem comes when the estimate you give is not the one management wants to hear.

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#108

Post by heresy » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 8:51 PM UTC

zedshaw wrote: post #101

jdavid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might work in StarFleet, but the problem is that if you promise a manager something repeatedly, by overestimating, they will start to assume you are padding your results. Having worked on scrum teams before, I find its a good structured way to have a dialog about how much work is left, and how long you expect it to take. So rather than saying an hour. You would say this is as easy as changing a diaper, or its as…

> the problem is that if you promise a manager something The real problem is thinking of "estimates" as "promises" when really they're rough guesses. If you go around holding people to a guess as if it were some kind of gospel biblical contract then yes, they will lie their ass off to protect themselves. Combine that with the fact that most organizations attempt to control the platform used, computers used, monitor s…

Sometimes they are promises. To customers. Who've already paid for it. :S

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#109

Post by rahoulb » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 9:17 PM UTC

bsaunder wrote: post #23

Almost all bad estimates are due to a lack of information. In software development, the information that tends to be missing are the particulars of the task being estimated (which code needs to be modified, in what way). This missing information is highly unique and not to generally transitive from one programing assignment to the next. Additional information about the process is usually not the problem. Things like…

agreed. we don't have a language to define the problem in the first place.

i am great at estimating - unfortunately i often go over because what i heard was being asked for is subtly different to what the client thought they were asking for

Re: Why Can't Developers Estimate Time?

#110

Post by SpaceAcer » Fri, Apr 08, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

Classic line... the better question is: "Why can't developers see into the future?"

Programming is one of the worst jobs for dealing with people. Managers assume you have no life and work you 12 hours a day for a software product, telling you that it might save your job. It's all a ruse; once they get what they want, why pay for an expensive developer to support your new site or application?

If anyone asks me if they should be a professional developer I tell them 'Run away!'. I don't wish the experience on anyone.