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When did estimates turn into deadlines?

domainanalysis.io

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Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#51

Post by bigiain »

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…

> 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.

I worked at a place where this management insanity was endemic, which lead to everyone padding all estimates with enough contingency to account for that. Which lad to the design team, and the front-end team, and the backend team, and the QA team, all padding out their estimates by 150 or 200% - to avoid the blame storms they'd seen for missing "deadlines".

Then the Project managers added those all ups and added 150 - 200%. Then the account managers and sales teams added 150 - 200% to the estimated costs before adding margins and setting prices.

Which ended up in literally around 1 million dollars a month to maintain a website which could _easily_ have been handled by a full time team of 8 or 10 decent web and full stack devs. Hell, apart from the 24x7 support requirement, I reckon I know a few great Rails or Django devs who could have done all the work on their own, perhaps with a part time of contracted graphic designer.

That all lasted a handful of years, until the client worked out what was going on, and my company management flew the whole thing into the mountain, with ~100 people losing their jobs and their owed entitlements (I was out about $26K that day.)

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#53

Post by readthenotes1 »

dspillett wrote: post #7

> 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...

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#55

Post by ebiester »

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…

The managers are often just as trained in this by the organization. If I'm in a "commitment" organization, I'm sure as hell telling them all to pad their estimates.

The punishment for a commitment culture is inflated estimates.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#56

Post by tivert »

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…

> 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 do, they will see right through this.

I think a manager who doesn't know the difference between and estimate and a deadline is one who "[doesn't] know what the fuck is going on," and that's the kind of manager the GP uses this strategy with.

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#58

Post by robocat »

darekkay wrote: post #5
baxtr wrote: 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.

> the first number you put out will be remembered This is called anchoring effect, a psychological bias.

I think you meant "anchoring bias": https://www.scribbr.com/research-bias/anchoring-bias/

Anchoring effect is something related but subltley different: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#59

Post by gjvc »

eminent101 wrote: post #50
aoeusnth1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So many bold claims in this comment and little to no justification. For what it's worth I've seen pretty much the opposite. I don't know about competent vs. incompetent engineers. But when it comes to experience, I've seen the inexperienced ones giving super low estimates and the experienced people giving larger estimates.

But when it comes to experience, I've seen the inexperienced ones giving super low estimates and the experienced people giving larger estimates

is the essence of this thread

Re: When did estimates turn into deadlines?

#60

Post by djbusby »

This is especially problematic in early business when the team is small and manager act with same policy/process as when at BigCo.

In this case don't estimate the time to build a poorly defined $something - invert the problem to estimate the value of $somethig.

It's amazing how many of those managers asking for estimates push back when they have to put one out. With all the same reasoning that engineers have when estimating.

A good manager should start with the Value first and allocate time-budget that makes that Value payoff.

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