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Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

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Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#11

Post by evantbyrne »

awb wrote: post #6

Ran a successful digital agency for years. Estimation was mostly guesswork. There’s a theory that work expands to fill the time you give it and I found that to be largely true. Other agencies would quote 3 months for projects we’d complete in 6 weeks. Even then I was taking engineers 3 week estimates and doubling them for buffer. We didn’t do anything special other than commit individuals to a single project, or two…

I suspect that experience is a major factor as well. You somehow knew to double those estimates. At the agencies I've worked at over the years, less experienced individuals seemed to consistently underestimate the time it would take to do things and then complete those tasks haphazardly/late/bugged. I went freelance and haven't had any trouble providing accurate estimations.

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#12

Post by mechanicker »

Reminds me of my early days as a rookie people manager. I was asked to estimate a project for a team that I had no idea about their abilities. I was very hesitant to estimate since I had no data to begin with. My manager asked me to throw a number and see if there is a push back!!!

I soon made a decision not to be a manager responsible for guess work based estimation and moved back to an IC role where I estimate effort for work assigned to me.

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#13

Post by mgkimsal »

evantbyrne wrote: post #11
awb wrote: post #6

Ran a successful digital agency for years. Estimation was mostly guesswork. There’s a theory that work expands to fill the time you give it and I found that to be largely true. Other agencies would quote 3 months for projects we’d complete in 6 weeks. Even then I was taking engineers 3 week estimates and doubling them for buffer. We didn’t do anything special other than commit individuals to a single project, or two…

I suspect that experience is a major factor as well. You somehow knew to double those estimates. At the agencies I've worked at over the years, less experienced individuals seemed to consistently underestimate the time it would take to do things and then complete those tasks haphazardly/late/bugged. I went freelance and haven't had any trouble providing accurate estimations.

I would guess a repeatable/known type of service or project helps a lot as well. Most of my engagements are relatively different from each other, and I'm doing different things all the time. I've worked places which were offering a narrower set of functionality, with limited customizations, and that's generally much easier to estimate. Also much easier to have estimates in which you've said 'no' to things altogether, vs spending time researching/testing/trialing stuff that's new to you.

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#14

Post by ElFitz »

Whenever the topic of software estimates comes up, I am reminded of Erik Bernhardsson’s piece[1].

It was a great read, and still proves useful when trying to explain how things can sometimes go quite wrong.

[1]: https://erikbern.com/2019/04/15/why-software-projects-take-l...

Edit: it has come up a few times on hn. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19671673

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#15

Post by pyrolistical »

Lost me at the first sentence

> Effort estimation is an important component of any project, software or otherwise.

The most “important component”, what does that even mean? Do they mean task? Isn’t the most important thing to deliver results? Which could mean working software or aborting bad projects

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#16

Post by calvinmorrison »

mgkimsal wrote: post #13
evantbyrne wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that experience is a major factor as well. You somehow knew to double those estimates. At the agencies I've worked at over the years, less experienced individuals seemed to consistently underestimate the time it would take to do things and then complete those tasks haphazardly/late/bugged. I went freelance and haven't had any trouble providing accurate estimations.

I would guess a repeatable/known type of service or project helps a lot as well. Most of my engagements are relatively different from each other, and I'm doing different things all the time. I've worked places which were offering a narrower set of functionality, with limited customizations, and that's generally much easier to estimate. Also much easier to have estimates in which you've said 'no' to things altogether,…

To the point of providing flat rate pricing at my job. We realized spending an hour or two getting a sign off on an SOW or spending four hours on a discovery call didn't change the time it took to complete in 90% of cases. I can just price my stuff all the same because for the most part, EDI mapping is EDI mapping. If we run into something weird. Yeah. But thats once or twice per quarter.

Meanwhile our ecommerce integration product pricing is all over the place, because there is just so much variation. I am hoping to move that to base pricing for the product + time and materials for consulting.

In a sense my EDI team is busier, less stressed, but less gratified. The web team is always getting a curve ball and its certainly a younger man's game. Or at least someone who's willing to roll with the punches, but the payoff is sweet

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#17

Post by am44jnsf »

pyrolistical wrote: post #15

Lost me at the first sentence > Effort estimation is an important component of any project, software or otherwise. The most “important component”, what does that even mean? Do they mean task? Isn’t the most important thing to deliver results? Which could mean working software or aborting bad projects

it says "an important", not "most important". It's correct, it is an important.

Re: Software effort estimation is mostly fake research (2021)

#19

Post by evantbyrne »

mgkimsal wrote: post #13
evantbyrne wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect that experience is a major factor as well. You somehow knew to double those estimates. At the agencies I've worked at over the years, less experienced individuals seemed to consistently underestimate the time it would take to do things and then complete those tasks haphazardly/late/bugged. I went freelance and haven't had any trouble providing accurate estimations.

I would guess a repeatable/known type of service or project helps a lot as well. Most of my engagements are relatively different from each other, and I'm doing different things all the time. I've worked places which were offering a narrower set of functionality, with limited customizations, and that's generally much easier to estimate. Also much easier to have estimates in which you've said 'no' to things altogether,…

Well for me it certainly helps that I usually have clear requirements up-front. Designers for instance take a lot of the guesswork out of what I need to do for website work. For other things, like debugging legacy code, I just tell clients that I need time to diagnose the issue before I can give an estimate.
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