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.
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.
“why don’t you listen to what you just said in your head, and let’s start this conversation over from before going into it with the wrong attitude” is a more polite version of “the fuck did you just say? Start over and drop the bullshit at the door.”
And I wholeheartedly recommend using it if the occasion pops up. It’s not rude, not confrontational, allows the person who said the dumb thing to hopefully realize their mistake and brush it off without being directly called on it. Any supervisor that is worth working for won’t bring it up again.
This is like when the customer loudly proclaims they can get the item cheaper somewhere else, and just stare at you like a cow in a field when you say they should go there then
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.
I’m not saying this for all instances. Maybe I’ve been fortunate. 100% of project managers I’ve worked alongside looked for parallel paths, and that’s their job. But once the feedback from tech SME is that these are linear dependencies, they said okay. Let’s move to discuss how to communicate this to leadership and customer.
My personal experience. Your mileage obviously may vary greatly. But a PM that doesn’t understand the mythical man month, isn’t much of a PM. Or even a competent team member.
I’ve had great PMs and they understood their role well. Their job was to help communicate to the stakeholders what’s needed and why it’s taking so long.
They are far few in between. But when you have a good one, you can’t imagine your life without one.
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.
And for good reason. The estimate will usually get longer because the more you look the more tasks, questions and dependencies you find. I’m starting to think they don’t want accuracy at all.
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.
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