I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
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I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
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Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#2Thanks for this, it's a great article. I have this problem with my boss occasionally, which is funny because he's a programmer. "Oh, you just have to do this and this, shouldn't take you too long."
You're right, there's always those bottlenecks that crop up that you didn't expect. It's impossible to truly know all the limitations of the software you're working with. I work with Drupal, and it has A LOT of those problems. Sometimes I'll think something will be easy to do, only to find out that the popular modules I thought would work great don't cater to the specific use-case I'm working on. Then it's back to schlepping.
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#3Thanks for this, it's a great article. I have this problem with my boss occasionally, which is funny because he's a programmer. "Oh, you just have to do this and this, shouldn't take you too long." You're right, there's always those bottlenecks that crop up that you didn't expect. It's impossible to truly know all the limitations of the software you're working with. I work with Drupal, and it has A LOT of those probl…
As bad as it is for non-technical managers to estimate, I've found that in some cases, programmer managers can be worse, especially if you're new on the team. Why? They already know the code, so often their estimates state how long they would take to implement the feature. They either forget or don't realize that you have to spend additional time to learn how the code works and how to best integrate your change. They don't realize that sometimes it's harder to modify software than it is to build anew.
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#4Thanks for this, it's a great article. I have this problem with my boss occasionally, which is funny because he's a programmer. "Oh, you just have to do this and this, shouldn't take you too long." You're right, there's always those bottlenecks that crop up that you didn't expect. It's impossible to truly know all the limitations of the software you're working with. I work with Drupal, and it has A LOT of those probl…
One of my favorite quotes from G.E.D:
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#5Thanks for this, it's a great article. I have this problem with my boss occasionally, which is funny because he's a programmer. "Oh, you just have to do this and this, shouldn't take you too long." You're right, there's always those bottlenecks that crop up that you didn't expect. It's impossible to truly know all the limitations of the software you're working with. I work with Drupal, and it has A LOT of those probl…
As bad as it is for non-technical managers to estimate, I've found that in some cases, programmer managers can be worse, especially if you're new on the team. Why? They already know the code, so often their estimates state how long they would take to implement the feature. They either forget or don't realize that you have to spend additional time to learn how the code works and how to best integrate your change. They…
Really interesting point here. Although I'd like to point out that I don't think it's necessarily being technical vs non-technical that makes it hard to estimate. There are probably non-technical people out there who have managed a lot of software projects and have developed solid intuition for how long projects will take.
The real divider is experienced vs. inexperienced. But that's just a guess - I've never been managed by someone non-technical.
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#6Funny to see this on the same front page as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795064.
"[Jobs] pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in four days. Woz knew that was impossible, but he ended up doing it."
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#7You are in a closet, looking at a closed door. How big is the house?
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#8A thought that occurred to me - another metric we use in the real word would be what I'm calling "solidness" or "weight." I.e. if you see a house and a similarly sized tent, the apparent difference we see between the two is weight - we can probably pick up the tent and walk away with it.
In a sense, that's a useful way to describe software to non-technical users. We can throw something quick and dirty together, but it would be light as a feather, and carried away by any kind of load whatsoever. Or we can build something more solid to last longer, but it should be clear that that will take more effort.
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#9Funny to see this on the same front page as http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795064 . "[Jobs] pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in four days. Woz knew that was impossible, but he ended up doing it."
Yeah and Linus coded git in a weekend...
The infuriating thing for me is that people don't get that these monumentally fast development achievements still involved a massive expenditure of personal effort. Thus the "It'll take a few days of coding" customers of the gp are only more annoying if they cite examples like yours, expecting a complete product in a few days.
Re: I'm Sure It Will Only Take You A Few Days To Code
#10Nice write up.
Want to add two other reasons we're horrible at making estimates.
1. Expectations. 2. No widely accepted language for writing requirements.
Re: 1. Expectations are just hard to manage. Even when you do get "So the site's pretty simple" - the set of features in their brain is totally different from the set of features in your brain. Alas, it'll take more than "all it needs to do is X, Y, Z" to fix this process.
Re: 2. Is there a professional software consulting company that has solved this problem? I say there isn't. I also say that with the advent of Agile/Lean Startup methodologies, it'll probably never happen - "No, we don't write reqs, we have stories you need to approve." uh huh, okay. For writing requirements, I got really damn fond of Cucumber, but then the lean-ux took off, and that shifted everybody's priorities.
Bottom line, until there's a widely accepted way to communicate design and functionality, making bad estimates will always be easy to do