Responding to “Are bugs and slow delivery ok?”

Post by qingcharles » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 1:26 PM UTC

joshspankit wrote: post #119

qingcharles wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for (1). I was trying to explain to someone the other day how unpredictable coding is, but you're right, it's wildly unpredictable. Even for tiny projects they sometimes go so far off the rails. I remember working on this one major project - an online music store - and one of the execs hired his very lovely wife to project manage a team of developers. She would create these fantastic charts in Microsoft Pro…

At some point I ran across this strategy for estimating when you’re the one doing it: Take whatever time you think it’ll take, then double it. Then add 20%* Things still go off the rails of course making an an imperfect solution, but it ends up being more right than any other method I’ve tried. *If there are any unknown unknowns I might start multiplying by the number of big ones.

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 7:54 PM UTC

nickelbob wrote: post #108

bedobi wrote: post #18

The problem is that anyone with a semblance of professional pride will find it mentally quite difficult to knowingly ship bad software. Like, sure, even if we make best efforts to catch both obvious and less obvious bugs, all software we ship will still be full of bugs. But knowingly shipping software full of obvious bugs... it feels unprofessional. And makes you really feel the weight of all the inevitable bug repor…

Perhaps one solution is to divorce your own self worth from the quality of the software you happen to write and to realize that you are an employee first and a software engineer second - make decisions that increase the amount of money the company makes and look for self worth in that itself or in hobbies/family/friends/something else.

Post by int_19h » Sun, Jul 09, 2023, 8:02 PM UTC

von_lohengramm wrote: post #2

This is how I feel about most "things I hate". Despite my strong feelings towards them, there's a reason why they are the way that they are. Almost always it comes down to my interests & priorities not aligning with reality/everyone else.

Post by cameldrv » Mon, Jul 10, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #93

cameldrv wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software does not have to be wildly unpredictable if you do good estimation work up front. Being good at this is very important if you work for clients that have a specific budget or are doing fixed bids for software. The main thing is that you have to take estimation very seriously. You have to put experienced people on the estimation task, and you have to spend a lot of time on it to get it right, but doing it righ…

> Software does not have to be wildly unpredictable if you do good estimation work up front. You also need someone with 1) strong technical and/or product skills, 2) good communication skills and decisiveness, and 3) explicit executive authority. That's the only way to avoid scope creep and bikeshedding. When you started working on a project without knowing what you're building, or end up delivering a very different…