11–20 of 41 posts
(Best + Worst + 4 * Average) / 6
One nice property is that it imposes a distribution that adjusts for longer tailed risks.
Things, IMO, which are spoilers: 1. Starting with an End date and create a plan from there. Some top leads want to get promoted and want to achieve X by this quarter or next. 2. With so many people leaving, there is not enough time and resources to onboard new folks, who are accounted in deliveries 3. Too many parallel initiatives 4. Unstable production taking daily attention 5. Not able to priortise tech debts over…
7. Difficulty in getting clearer specs when it's discovered the original specs are not detailed enough.
8. Decision makers at top (or middle?) having too much grass root visibility and micromanaging the project.
When I make an estimate, I just double what I think it is and this is usual pretty accurate. I keep underestimating, sometimes doubling down I wonder myself, will it really take this long? 99% of the time, in the end, the answer was yes. So this is my goto method. People still think I finish stuff quick, even if I think myself it's too long.
So "oh, an hour or so" becomes 2 days. A week turns into two months.
I don't usually express those estimates, but it gives a good check on an initial, usually optimistic guess.
Interesting article. Our PO often almost demands estimations from us. Usually I am already responding in a best/worst case fashion. In the end PO only seems to remember the best case and takes it as commitment. Since I was fooled by this a few times, I am now collecting a paper trail and am quiet reluctant, when giving "just a ballpark figure". My key takeaway was, that estimations mostly aren't about accuracy or get…
When I make an estimate, I just double what I think it is and this is usual pretty accurate. I keep underestimating, sometimes doubling down I wonder myself, will it really take this long? 99% of the time, in the end, the answer was yes. So this is my goto method. People still think I finish stuff quick, even if I think myself it's too long.
My favorite estimation hack / joke is similar: take your best estimate, double it, and move up to the next higher time units. So "oh, an hour or so" becomes 2 days. A week turns into two months. I don't usually express those estimates, but it gives a good check on an initial, usually optimistic guess.
The main feuture is that you can report more work than there are hours of work. E.g. complete 8 days of work in two days by doing 4 2-day tasks.
I find it way easier to estimate when something is done rather than how much time it will take to do.
I think the biggest thing holding engineering estimates back is that the people asking for them are actually not interested in accurate estimates; instead they are looking for inputs to be used in various games of corporate politics.
often folks don’t know if what is being estimated is actually knowable.
building something new pre product market fit is a crapshoot until it’s not.
I think the biggest thing holding engineering estimates back is that the people asking for them are actually not interested in accurate estimates; instead they are looking for inputs to be used in various games of corporate politics.