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Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#71

Post by erdo »

KronisLV wrote: post #51
void_mint wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for when potential clients ask your company: "How much would implementing a system to do X cost?" And what do estimates provide here, that sales just picking a number doesn't? Estimates are made up numbers. They're estimates. Also this line that you omitted answers your question more directly: > If you're a sales driven/feature factory company, the estimates won't matter anyway as you'll demand to meet your…

> And what do estimates provide here, that sales just picking a number doesn't? Example #1: - a company in the industry asks your company to implement $FOO, they want to know how much it'd cost - the sales people talk to the engineers, who come up with a certain amount of time it could take - the sales people turn this into a monetary figure of $X - a contract is made, the project proceeds to be developed, probably w…

Some sales people work out how much the client is willing to pay, and that's the price. The deliverables are squeezed in to that price at a later date, by cutting corners if necessary - I think it's quite an effective way for companies to make money.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#72

Post by ThalesX »

void_mint wrote: post #30
serial_dev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you tell more? I would be interested how you can get management to let go of regular estimations, and how you still delivered.

> I would be interested how you can get management to let go of regular estimations, They have to convince themselves.

If they pay a lot of money per hour, they basically convince themselves of whatever it is they're paying for.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#74

Post by KronisLV »

erdo wrote: post #71
KronisLV wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what do estimates provide here, that sales just picking a number doesn't? Example #1: - a company in the industry asks your company to implement $FOO, they want to know how much it'd cost - the sales people talk to the engineers, who come up with a certain amount of time it could take - the sales people turn this into a monetary figure of $X - a contract is made, the project proceeds to be developed, probably w…

Some sales people work out how much the client is willing to pay, and that's the price. The deliverables are squeezed in to that price at a later date, by cutting corners if necessary - I think it's quite an effective way for companies to make money.

Make money? Sure.

Deliver working software? Perhaps.

Deliver quality software? Almost certainly not.

Now, whether people actually want quality software, given that its development would take a lot of time, is debatable. Many times being the first to market is good enough, though saying that leaves a sour taste in my mouth as an engineer.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#75

Post by erdo »

lax4ever wrote: post #3

Full disclosure; I am not a manager of anyone nor do I work in a software company. However, I work in an industry where things need to be timed out pretty well and I have to constantly provide an answer to my bosses and colleagues of the question "When do you expect to be able to do X?". From my perspective it involves two things. First, it is about applying the experience of similar situations to the future. I can't…

This sounds like good advice, and that level of communication can certainly be missing sometimes.

Quite a few software projects though are one off custom jobs where the requirements have never been implemented before (sometimes anywhere) and it does make estimating based on past performance pretty difficult. It's also notoriously hard to predict all the problems you might come across ahead of time, especially if you aren't familiar with the specifics of the code you will need to integrate with (maybe you could consider that like quoting to refurbish an old house before you've looked inside it and seen the damp patch and the hole in the roof)

It does get easier with experience though, and much more so if you are regularly doing the same kind of software projects.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#76

Post by catlifeonmars »

dharmab wrote: post #43
aasasd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a dev who has quite some freedom managing himself, I learned to multiply my own estimates by about 2-2.5. If I had a bad case of managers, I would probably multiply by four.

I personally multiply by 3 for any process which isn't almost entirely automation.

Same. And this is also what I teach junior engineers to do. If there are any unknowns, double it to 6x. No one will be upset if you deliver early.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#77

Post by aasasd »

aasasd wrote: post #36
nzmsv wrote: post #15

The below is a joke, but sadly it is representative of most teams I have worked on. If it's like anything that most managers do, you have the team come up with estimates, have some meetings to see if you missed anything, discover that you did, then create a schedule, remembering to add slack time for unforeseen interruptions due to people getting sick, customer issues, etc. Then you see that the schedule is too long.…

As a dev who has quite some freedom managing himself, I learned to multiply my own estimates by about 2-2.5. If I had a bad case of managers, I would probably multiply by four.

Also related: always multiply your estimates by pi https://web.archive.org/web/20170603123809/http://www.tuicoo...

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#78

Post by quadcore »

20-30%? Yeah thats bad and I know why. You guys think you are producing cars when in fact you are designing cars. Ask yourself the following question: what would you do if you were managing a tier 1 soccer team? Would you treat every player equal? No. You would let each talent play where its good at. Stop thinking your engineers are replaceable. You are not in a factory.

In short, there is someone in your team who knows how to estimate. Find him. Find who is good at what and use their f-ing talent.

Re: Ask HN: How do you do estimates in 2021?

#79

Post by smichel17 »

void_mint wrote: post #49
gumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't estimate. They don't matter and nobody cares about them anyway. This only works for some projects. For example if your MVP or go/no go prototype costs $5MM (which a hardware or life science product easily could) you really need to know if it will be 5 or 10. I ran a company which always quoted 3X fixed price what we thought the project would really cost, even if things turned out to go wrong. Typically we mad…

Hardware and life science projects usually have more time to research and prepare than the hour of weekly estimation provided by silly agile orgs. Also, how frequently do hardware and life science projects go far over budget and under scope? Do their estimates matter? As I said, if you have $5MM, you'll get what you get for $5MM. If you want to spend a boatload of time researching, your estimate might be closer, but…

> As I said, if you have $5MM, you'll get what you get for $5MM. If you want to spend a boatload of time researching, your estimate might be closer, but that research isn't free.

Knowing how far you'll get might affect what you prioritize, no?

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