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When did estimates turn into deadlines?

domainanalysis.io

171–180 of 237 posts

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#171

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…

I think "good managers" create environments where estimates are treated as collaborative tools rather than promises etched in stone

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#173
post #2

I learned something important early in my career: the first number you put out will be remembered. Unfortunately it’s often true. People keep saying: "but didn’t you initially say X?" "Sure I did, but I have new knowledge" won't always work. A nasty side-effect is that people who are aware of this shy away from giving you numbers.

My method is take an educated guess multiply by 2 add 1 as extra buffer and then change it to the next unit, e.g. day->week, week->month, months->quarter. So for something that it should take 1 day I'd say 3 weeks. It seems a lot but at the end there's usually so much red tape, burocracy and and technical debt that it usually ends in the latter ballpark.

Nice algorithm!

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#174

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…

The hallmark of a bad manager who doesn't know they're a bad manager: "Why can't you just give me a number?" Inexperienced managers or people backfilling for someone else I can completely understand, they're not comfortable with the uncertainty they're dealing with. However in any other circumstance I think it's inexcusable.

Here is an approach for estimation that works pretty well (from the point of view of a manager).

1. Ask the dev team to provide an optimistic estimate, and to then multiply by 2 to make it "realistic".

2. On top of that, add another x2 (which can be recalibrated as you learn how accurate this tech team is over time with estimates). Don't tell the developers about this, but make sure your higher-ups understand that this is what they need to be prepared for in terms of budgeting and time limits.

The reason you don't ask the developers to multiply by 4 directly, is to keep them motivated to aim for the x2, and avoid slacking or over engineering while feeling overly comfortable early on.

But by having the extra x2 in reserve, your back is covered, and you can afford to be cheritable with the dev team as they (as usually happens) go a bit over the x2 estimate.

This buys some early goodwill that can later be traded back in if you need them to up their game later on.

The alternative to the above is to exclusively find managers (at all levels) that can combine manager skills with high level engineering skills. Such managers often have the ability to expose unneccery delays directly, which includes the ability to tell apart delays caused by devs slacking from incompetence, scope creep or unexpected but valid causes.

Such people are really hard to find, though, for most companies. But companies that manage to build such high level top to bottom tech lead cultures may certainly be able to go from the 4x back down to 2x or even 1x compared to companies with non-technical managers.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#175
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And thus we get to the root of the problem. As as business executive, why not simply track how long your big projects tend to take, rather than try and dictate how long they should take?

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

You work backwards. You decide how much time you’re willing to spend to get the worth. Then, take steps towards it with checkpoints.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#176
post #19

One trick, if you can get away with it, is to ensure that you are always estimating for a fixed scope exclusive of unknown unknowns. You should not provide an estimate for "feature X implemented", but rather for "feature X engine". If you discover additional work to be done, then you need to add "existing code refactor", "feature X+Y integration", etc. as discovered milestones. Unfortunately, you need that nomenclatu…

Setting the thermostat to 80F WILL bring the room to 72F faster than if you set it to 72F on most ovens/AC devices, unless the thermostat is located far away from the device.

Also, many engineering teams WILL take any time given to them.

But instead of making estimates and plans into hard deadlines (when facing the engineers), managers can make sure the organization is ready for overruns.

And as the estimated completion time approaches, they can remain reasonable understanding as long as the devs can explain what parts took longer than estimated, and why.

Part of this is for the manager to make sure customers, sales and/or higher level managers also do not treat the planned completion time as a deadline. And if promises have to be made, customer facing deadlines must be significantly later than the estimated completion time.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#177

> When did estimates turn into deadlines? In my personal experience: the first time I gave what could be construed as an official estimate.

The deadline portion come in when someone expects to pay for the work or to pay for the opportunity cost for the work not being completed...

And that someone usually needs to get some information to me by a certain time for my estimate to be reliable, and often doesn't. Or they need to not change the plan half way through and expect the same delivery time. Or needs to understand that when I say two tasks will take about a day each, no I can have both done by tomorrow. And do on, and so forth.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is probably analogous to what happens in the American healthcare sector with physicians/hospitals/insurance carriers/pharma/etc. Each one padding their bills making it horrendously expensive for everyone at the end of the chain.

The padding in healthcare is part of the system. One part is to have high prices so insurance can negotiate them down. And for hospitals in particular, prices are padded to subsidize emergency care for the indigent (which they have to provide without regard to ability to pay; thanks Reagan).

Did... did you just chide Reagan because his healthcare policy was not sociopathic enough? I'll admit, that's new. Impressive.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is probably analogous to what happens in the American healthcare sector with physicians/hospitals/insurance carriers/pharma/etc. Each one padding their bills making it horrendously expensive for everyone at the end of the chain.

The padding in healthcare is part of the system. One part is to have high prices so insurance can negotiate them down. And for hospitals in particular, prices are padded to subsidize emergency care for the indigent (which they have to provide without regard to ability to pay; thanks Reagan).

> One part is to have high prices so insurance can negotiate them down.

One basic truism in business is that "Everybody wants a discount".

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what you are working on. When I did agency type of work, building things you have built before, from scratch, it's easy to estimate. E.g. some sort of e-commerce website from scratch. On the other hand, working in a large corp, with massive legacy systems, unknown domain knowledge and dependency on other teams, it becomes near impossible. What might have been a 2 hour task in agency, might either…

In your 2nd example of a large corp I can see myself joining and not knowing anything about all these potential landmines etc… but if I was at that corp for say 2-3 years those would all be known things, no? And hence estimates can come with number of assumptions based on 6 other teams doing whatever it is that they need to do etc…? But I totally agree with your point and would not be disappointed if someone missed a…

I agree with the general sentiment (estimation is part of the work, ppl are not good at estimates, ppl are not good at their job) I also think that in high churn rate companies, or where team get created and disbanded every two quarters, it’s quite difficult to have a mental model on other teams ability to deliver a dependency for your team. And this situation I find quite common tbh
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