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When did estimates turn into deadlines?

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Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#101

Post by genghisjahn »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #9

I've gone through times when management would treat estimates as deadlines, and were deaf to any sort of reason about why it could be otherwise, like the usual thing of them changing the specification repeatedly. So when those times have occurred I've (we've more accurately) adopted what I refer to the "deer in the headlights" response to just about anything non-trivial. "Hoo boy, that could be doozy. I think someone…

What helped me was to track Sprint Volatility in addition to Sprint Velocity. We had our over all capacity, let's say 40 points and that would go up or down some based on people leaving the team, joining the team, etc. It's just an average of how much a team can get done in a given sprint. Velocity was gauged as points per person per day.

Volatility is how much the sprint changes. Sure you can pull one 5 pt ticket out and add in a 3 point and 2 point, but if you do that 12 times in a two week sprint, we will not finish the sprint even if total capacity stays under 40 points.

I would snapshot the sprint each day, so each day I could see how many tickets got removed/added. The end result being I could show my manager, look, when volatility is low, we almost always finish the sprint. When the volatility is high, we don't, it doesn't matter if we are over/under velocity because we don't have the time to properly plan and get clarity on asks. Have our product team think more than two weeks out and we'll deliver. That worked to a degree.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#102

Post by intelVISA »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #9

I've gone through times when management would treat estimates as deadlines, and were deaf to any sort of reason about why it could be otherwise, like the usual thing of them changing the specification repeatedly. So when those times have occurred I've (we've more accurately) adopted what I refer to the "deer in the headlights" response to just about anything non-trivial. "Hoo boy, that could be doozy. I think someone…

Problem is anything non-trivial can't be estimated: deadlines are useful to timebox the process and keep it accountable with a follow-up to see if it's worth continuing. Otherwise it becomes "just trust me bro" which is equally unfair in the opposite direction.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#103

Post by intelVISA »

kareemm wrote: post #35
stevage wrote: post #30

I definitely relate to the basic issue of estimates with my one-person consulting projects. The bit they didn't mention is: who pays for the cost of the inspections and analysis? In software, it can take a long time to analyse the requirements and the solution, in order to come up with an estimate (or fixed quote), and I find it awkward trying to get paid for that time.

Do a roadmap. Fixed scope small project that you get paid for where you define requirements. Deliverable is a functional requirements doc. It derisks the project for them, and gives you more confidence when quoting a fixed scope fixed price project. You just don’t guarantee timeline. I’ve been doing it for over a decade - it works wonders.

Best way but hard to find clients open to this as it requires more trust especially if it starts to drag on.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#104

Post by resters »

Of course businesses want to be able to de-risk by having highly accurate predictions of the future. Too bad those don't exist in any domain of business planning.

More often, the focus on estimating comes from management layers where incentives are not structured to reward anyone for accurate estimates, merely to punish them for missed deadlines.

Time to finished is only one dimension of estimation. With any unit of engineering work there may be code debt added or removed, complexity increased or decreased, morale increased or decreased, etc.

Focusing only on time, especially in a punitive way surely negatively impacts the others.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#105

Post by mewpmewp2 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #100
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you tell what is worth doing if you don't know how long it might take?

You make projections instead of estimates. You split the work that needs to be done into many tasks and project from past experiences. You cannot rely 100% on any estimates either, and all you are doing by demanding estimates is creating stress and making people less productive. The meta work imposed by that in itself will make a project take more time, as everyone will be padding their estimates.

What is the difference between a projection and an estimate?

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#106

Post by AdieuToLogic »

After too many iterations of providing "some wild-ass guess" estimates and them turning into hard deadlines, I now try to champion a No Estimates[0][1] approach with stakeholders.

There is often understandable resistance to this at first. To address concerns, I find it helpful to share with stakeholders that a reasonably accurate estimate, one which could be legitimately used in planning concerns, is really only possible in one of two situations:

  A) the outstanding work is a carbon-copy of a previous
     effort, such as the second time provisioning a data
     center for the same system.

  B) the remaining new functional work is determined
     by the team to be in the last quartile and is
     well-defined, including remaining risks to
     successful completion.
EDIT:

Micro-estimates are the enabler of micro-management. A healthy team identifies the highest priority tasks to perform and does so in descending order, where priority is defined as risk to project success.

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhbT7EvYN0c

1 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30650836-noestimates

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#107

Post by qaq »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #45
redleggedfrog wrote: post #9

I've gone through times when management would treat estimates as deadlines, and were deaf to any sort of reason about why it could be otherwise, like the usual thing of them changing the specification repeatedly. So when those times have occurred I've (we've more accurately) adopted what I refer to the "deer in the headlights" response to just about anything non-trivial. "Hoo boy, that could be doozy. I think someone…

In my experience, super large estimates don’t make you look good in the long run, they make you look incompetent. The engineers who are most likely to be under-performers are also those who give super inflated estimates for simple tasks. Maybe this is a good strategy for dealing with people who aren’t going to judge you for delivering slowly, or for managers who don’t know what the fuck is going on. For managers who…

This can only hold water in reasonably small orgs. In large orgs you often have to coordinate with large number of teams to get something delivered. Those teams have changing priorities that can impact when they complete their tasks. Your teams priorities can be shifted too to fight some fire. So this small estimate has no value because it has 0 correlation to the overall delivery date higher ups can commit to for the overall project.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#108

Post by jimjimjim »

Estimates have always been deadlines. I've noticed it since at least 1999. Either your estimate goes up a certain number of management levels and then they don't want to lose face so you are stuck with it. Or a salesperson has seen it and promised it to customer and nobody wants to be the one that loses the deal so you are stuck with it.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#109

Post by SoftTalker »

tyingq wrote: post #27

"Can you imagine if the insurance company started arguing with the repair shop, asking them—no—telling them that they would only pay the $18,000 and not the additional $20,000 because that was the original estimate? Does that sound ridiculous to you? It does to me, too. Thank heavens, reality does not operate like this." That happens all the time with insurance. I'm surprised at the confident tone in "reality does no…

It's also why they will write off a car if the estimate is much more than 70% of the value of the car. Yes the write-off may cost them more, but it's a known upper bound and it closes the claim. Insurance companies don't like open claims.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#110

Post by mjevans »

j1elo wrote: post #91

This is a fun formula that caught my eye a while ago in HN, it looks flashy and very cool. Of course, just like others do their estimations, this one is just a made up formula and without any formal validity, apart from supposedly personal experience: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37965582 My estimate math: R = t × [1.1^ln(n+p) + 1.3^X] R - time it really takes. t - shortest possible time it would take without…

The X factor is likely correct, but needs some additional notes.

Include additional X quantity for unknown unknowns, not just the known unknowns.

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