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“I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

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Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#31

Post by torgard »

tpoacher wrote: post #15

Honest question. Say you have a project. Your boss expects it can be done in two weeks. Let's say you are good at estimating your own velocity, and you estimate four weeks for that project. Do you: a) Tell your boss that you effectively suck and it will take you 4 weeks instead of 2? b) Tell your boss it will take two weeks and then blame delays when the deadline passes? or c) Tell your boss it will take two weeks, t…

I go with a) every time. I would find anything else to be unprofessional.

I don't "effectively suck", I disagree with them on the timing. I'll explain my reasoning, and if they cannot accept that, then it's out of my hands; they have chosen to cut corners.

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#33

Post by js8 »

rognjen wrote: post #10

An important thing I've learnt is that people over-estimate what they can do in a short time whereas they under-estimate what they can do in a long time. You probably wont finish that feature tonight, and that's OK. But you will have built something good in a year if you work on it a little bit consistently.

I feel like people underestimate the time something will take but overestimate the actual effort. What you say seems to be a consequence of that.

We underestimate the time, because in reality we often worry about things, and procrastinate on decisions. But in the estimate we don't think about it, we assume all decisions will be made immediately.

We overestimate the effort, because we sometimes do not know how to solve certain problems or work efficiently and in the estimate, we only know the hard way, not the easy way. But with practice, the hard way often becomes easy.

It might also come down to us valuing future work more than the work in the past, so looking back things are less effort than looking forward. But in the case of time itself (represented by hit/missed deadlines) we value these as more important with respect to the past than to the future (they already happened, while the future is uncertain).

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#35

Post by kumaranv »

tpoacher wrote: post #15

Honest question. Say you have a project. Your boss expects it can be done in two weeks. Let's say you are good at estimating your own velocity, and you estimate four weeks for that project. Do you: a) Tell your boss that you effectively suck and it will take you 4 weeks instead of 2? b) Tell your boss it will take two weeks and then blame delays when the deadline passes? or c) Tell your boss it will take two weeks, t…

I have seen the effects of not saying 'a'. People even asked to leave the company because of simply agreeing to finish as asked. When we agree to it, our head will roll unless the company never cares about missing deadlines.

Another approach which I follow nowadays is, agree but tell them that most probably I will miss the deadline.

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#36

Post by js8 »

splittingTimes wrote: post #13

Over the years our team has gotten good at grooming and splitting up tickets, at estimating individual tickets and keeping a steady Sprint velocity. Each 3 week Sprint we deliver what the team commits itself to. However on a macro level we fail spectacularly. Initial Roadmap estimation of how long new features take are way off. A new feature should be ready in 3 sprints.. make that 6. This milestone should be reached…

If you focus on short-term, it's somewhat unsurprising that you fail at long-term.

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#37

Post by [deleted] »

curuinor wrote: post #8

it's all fat tails, they're all fat tails, assume correlational structure and whack peeps in the head if they say anything about bell curves when you play the game of code you play a demonic St. Petersburg martingale. you start with one time period. flip the coin- heads, you finish. tails, you double the time period. at the end of that time period, flip it again: heads, you finish. tails you double the time period ag…

[deleted]

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#38

Post by [deleted] »

halayli wrote: post #9

imo, the problem with estimates vs reality is that estimates don't include mental state. And just to clarify more about mental state, I am referring to being in the zone / flow, and individuals are healthy and experience normal stress / happiness levels. We assume and expect consistent productivity from ourselves. Anecdotally, In my 20 yrs experience, I've never heard a software engineer saying to their manager "add…

[deleted]

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#39

Post by BlargMcLarg »

vishnugupta wrote: post #27
tpoacher wrote: post #15

Honest question. Say you have a project. Your boss expects it can be done in two weeks. Let's say you are good at estimating your own velocity, and you estimate four weeks for that project. Do you: a) Tell your boss that you effectively suck and it will take you 4 weeks instead of 2? b) Tell your boss it will take two weeks and then blame delays when the deadline passes? or c) Tell your boss it will take two weeks, t…

I (as a manager) always get a push-back when I try to impose my timelines on my team. Though we do have a healthy conversation as a result and we end up uncovering a bunch of unknowns which I then take it to my boss to inform them. When an engineer says they need 4 weeks instead of 2 it's my responsibility as a manager to get into the details, not as a way to micro-manage but to help my team be more confident about t…

Real question: do you actually believe this to be positive more so than negative most of the time?

Many people will feel resentment over what is essentially continuous doubt and having to spend time to push back that could be spent thinking about the problem, diving in and making a better idea later. Additionally, your way of presenting the argument seems harmless and emotionless, yet reality is often far away from this. A slew of social dynamics take place which make developers say things to get managers out of their hair more than truly having a discussion on how long it takes.

The far majority of managers also impose these deadlines without clear rime or reason ("because the customer wants it"/"because sales said so", at best). What's really going to happen if we estimate higher and end up overdelivering at the end? Are you truly going to lose customers, or are you just trying to pressure people in "being accurate", which often devolves more into having one's subordinates take the blame and the fall for underdelivering?

With all due respect, it feels like we are normalizing things for the sake of manager's security without much reciprocation (only make-believe that it is being reciprocated).

Re: “I’ll Finish It This Week” and Other Lies

#40

Post by Dylan16807 »

hmwhy wrote: post #12
halayli wrote: post #9

imo, the problem with estimates vs reality is that estimates don't include mental state. And just to clarify more about mental state, I am referring to being in the zone / flow, and individuals are healthy and experience normal stress / happiness levels. We assume and expect consistent productivity from ourselves. Anecdotally, In my 20 yrs experience, I've never heard a software engineer saying to their manager "add…

I'm not sure the metal state that you are referring to really makes a difference in terms of deadline estimation. The way I see it is that, in the grand scheme of things, if you are consistently missing the targets then either you get fired or, if the problem is systemic, the company folds. In other words, if you are not getting fired and the company isn't folding, and that neither is happening anytime soon, then eve…

> if the problem is systemic, the company folds.

Why do you think that? Imagine we have two similar companies, and one of them has mediocre deadline estimates, while the other would be mediocre except they also underestimate everything by 50%. Shouldn't both companies have similar success in the market?

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