me: “then why don’t you assign this task to them”
bos: “nobody wants and/or is capable of doing this task except you”
me: “…”
I get that at work too and often it’s a trust issue. The other fella could get it done faster, but could he get it done equally well? Support time will eat future development time.
I’ve always tried to estimate more time than I think a task will take unless I know it’s only like a simple task.
If I think it will take a few hours, I estimate a day. A day or so is 3. 3 or more becomes a week.
I’ve ran into way to many tasks somone else blindly put at a day and when we start to work the ticket we descover a ton of complications. I’ve seen so many 1-3 point tickets I’ve seen take multiple weeks because nobody thought about how deep the rabbit hole could go.
I also really like when they ask for an estimate on brand-new tech. How much time? I really, truly don’t know, because I’ve literally never worked with it in my life, nor anybody at the company. It could take 2 days or 2 weeks. Let’s just say I’ll tell you when I’m finished.
Ideally, tell them it will take 3 times your estimate and do it in 2 times your estimate. You’ll either look fast or correct.
That’s a rookie move. 2 hours can easily turn into 8 hours. If that happens, you still have to work on other things too. For a two hour task estimate a week. Two weeks to test and fix it when it breaks.
Always multiply your estimates by a factor of 4, so you can gain a reputation as a miracle worker
Heard from management: We need more accurate estimates.
I think they forgot what estimate means.
Engineers: We need more accurate SOWs and less feature creep.
Management: Please add this other feature in the same time period
Never give firm estimates. It’s done when it’s done. Feel free to check in.
Customers kinda want to know in advance if a task will take 2 hours or 200 hours in advance
“adding a button to the front page? Yeah, it will definitively take less than 6 months to make. No promises though.”
The button must identity if there’s pigeon in the picture
Spitball. Keep’em posted. Be honest.
But nothing firm.
As someone who has been doing this for two decades, I disagree. Give a firm estimate, and always deliver before you said you would, just make sure you pad the fuck out of that estimate so that it would be virtually impossible not to accomplish it.
That one hits home.
Is there a joke in the comic anywhere? This is just an average morning in consulting.
My favorite is when project managers try to tell you it will be easier with more people.
For some things that’s true.
But for some, it really just takes a while.
I tried to explain to a PM that maybe we should ask his wife next time if she can split up her pregnancy between two women. Baby could be born in half the time.
He didn’t appreciate my feedback and wrote me up for it. Probably my proudest moment.
The Ringelmann effect is the tendency for individual members of a group to become increasingly less productive as the size of their group increases
