The #NoEstimates Debate: An Unbiased Look At Origins, Arguments, and Leaders 299
New submitter MikeTechDude writes: Estimates have always been an integral part of the software development process. In recent years, however, developers, including Woody Zuill and Vasco Duarte, have begun to question the efficacy, and even the purpose, of using estimates to predict a project's cost and time line. A fierce debate has sprung up on Twitter, between those calling for an end to estimates and those who continue to champion their use in a professional setting. On the surface, it would appear that the debate is black and white. Proponents of the #NoEstimates Twitter hashtag are promoting a hard stop to all estimates industry-wide, and critics of the movement are insisting on a conservative approach that leaves little room for innovation. However, the reality of the debate has unfolded in far more complex, nuanced shades of gray. HP's Malcolm Isaacs digs deep and pinpoints where the debate started, where it now stands, and what its implications are for the future of software development. Meanwhile, Martin Heller offers his less unbiased approach with his post, #NoEstimates? Not so fast.
Estimates (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct:
Incorrect:
One of these is merely difficult. The other is doomed to failure from the time The Boss opened his mouth.
Re:Estimates (Score:5, Informative)
Not so. The second one has a correct and professional answer: "I do not know. This will require a pre-study. But adding new requirements during the process is right out, then the pre-study has to be repeated and the project reset." and on the pre-study you _can_ deliver a reasonable estimate.
It is not only bosses demanding infeasible things. It is also coders not enlightening them on what is possible and what is not.
Re:Estimates (Score:4, Insightful)
You are assuming the corporation you work for is a rational actor. They are not. They are products of paperwork and exist as golems to extract maximum profits at any cost.
The management you work for isn't to blame, because they're just trying to feed Moloch too. They are also consumables.
Looking for rational expectations and behavior in the 2015 workplace is like Captain Yossarian looking for rational expectations and behavior in the military. If you're not crazy, you're not paying attention.
Re: (Score:2)
"You are assuming the corporation you work for is a rational actor. They are not. They are products of paperwork and exist as golems to extract maximum *short term* profits at any cost."
There, corrected for you. Corporations, not being rational, as you said, usually act childish: they'll take one today even if it obviously mean lose ten tomorrow (yes, that's an hyperbole: change "today" with this quarter or next and "tomorrow" with in two years).
Re: (Score:3)
"You are assuming the corporation you work for is a rational actor. They are not. They are products of paperwork and exist as golems to extract maximum *short term* profits at any cost."
There, corrected for you. Corporations, not being rational, as you said, usually act childish: they'll take one today even if it obviously mean lose ten tomorrow (yes, that's an hyperbole: change "today" with this quarter or next and "tomorrow" with in two years).
If the chances of being there "tomorrow" is small enough, giving up ten tomorrow to take one today is the *most rational* choice.
After seeing the umpteenth coworker being "let go" for not reaping in enough short term profit, you need to be *irrational* to still think long term for the company.
The blame starts all the way from the stock holders demanding short term profit.
Re: (Score:2)
yes. you can say "I don't know" and then SOMEONE will make some sort of estimate anyways. because you need that for budget for making a quote to sell it to the client.
could just as well be #noquotes.
what's really needed is for the sales people to not sell something they don't know what they're selling, because then you end up with a project that's starting and has a deadline before anyone knows wtf it's supposed to even do.
Re: (Score:3)
what's really needed is for the sales people to not sell something they don't know what they're selling, because then you end up with a project that's starting and has a deadline before anyone knows wtf it's supposed to even do.
Then how would anyone every buy or sell any professional services work, or custom system development? If you are building a new ERP system for a client, you can't tell them "Well, we'll build it for you and then tell you how much it will cost after we're done." Maybe you can get away with a "cost plus" approach in the government (and we've all seen how well that works in terms of conserving taxpayer dollars), but in the real world a customer needs to budget for development well before it's delivered.
Or take
Re: (Score:2)
That sounds like a waterfall.
Re: (Score:2)
And the correct response to that is to go find a better job...
Re: (Score:3)
Well, I know I certainly wouldn't hire you... regardless of your qualifications... because you are an asshole. But we have a bunch of open positions for non-assholes right now.
There is a MASSIVE abundance of open recs for good engineers in Silicon Valley right now. It's such an employee market even many crappy companies are offering 6 figures for new college grads, large referral bonuses to existing employees, etc. Salaries are skyrocketing since the lack of available talent means companies must continue
Re: (Score:2)
To which you respond: "Sure, here's the keyboard and a pre-configured develop environment".
Re: (Score:2)
Even though we all know most of your AC story is bullshit - if it wasn't, the right response for the manager (instead of hanging up) would be to fire you on the spot. Even if you were actually a good programmer (again... AC bullshit) your attitude is the kind that ruins teams, let alone projects.
Re: (Score:2)
In most countries you can not fire one on the spot. ... which is not a valid reason in my country.
Especially if there is no reason. From the excerpt of that AC I see no reason to fire him. Except for not playing along as the boss wants
Re: (Score:3)
In most countries you can not fire one on the spot. Especially if there is no reason. From the excerpt of that AC I see no reason to fire him. Except for not playing along as the boss wants ... which is not a valid reason in my country.
In my country you can ONLY fire someone for no reason. If you give them a reason, then they have the grounds to sue you and prove that the reason was valid.
Re: (Score:2)
Classic example of an Internet Tough Guy [encyclopediadramatica.se].
Re:Estimates (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't produce a reasonably accurate estimate you may not have asked the right question.
How long will it take you to do this thing that nobody has ever done before
This is not the right question. The right question is: how long will it take you to assess this thing that nobody has ever done before, and devise strategies for doing it, and develop them to a point that you can estimate how long executing these strategies will take.
Nothing wrong with saying, "I need four weeks to research this before I'll be able to give a reliable estimate on implementation."
Re: (Score:2)
Also perfectly reasonable to say: "I don't have the background in this field of study to implement or reliably estimate the cost of implementing the requested technology. I would need assistance from experts in X, Y and Z before I could produce an estimate."
Re: (Score:3)
And you get the experts to help make the estimate. Then they say it is too long and cut it down to 1/3rd the time estimated. And the project ends up going way over what was estimated.
I have stopped caring about the estimates. The boss can make his fantasy timelines all he wants. Sometimes, when it is a small project I come in on time. Other times the project ends up going over. It ends up cutting into the next project, which has a firm stop date, so they don't give even the original amount of time estimated
Just stop (Score:5, Insightful)
No, hashtags are not movements. If you think so, you either have no clue what a movement is or no clue what a hashtag is, and I'm guessing it's the former. Talking about things on Twitter is talking and that's it. It's not some kind of political action.
Re: (Score:3)
If you eat a lot of Chex Mix, your movements will look like hashtags.
Re: (Score:2)
It becomes political when the amount of people is high enough.
As it is "making news" I guess it is a high enough involvement of people and hence: political and hence: a movement.
Re: (Score:2)
"There is no way in hades clients are going to write you a blank check on the software they want you to write for them."
That's why 'agile' processes born: at the very least they let the customer feel if they are partnering with the right provider as soon as possible -if they take the minimal time and effort it takes. Too many customers doesn't give space even for that minimal hassle.
"If you can't tell them what it will cost, they will go find someone else who will."
Exactly that: they will *tell* how much i
Re: (Score:2)
There is no way in hades clients are going to write you a blank check on the software they want you to write for them. If you can't tell them what it will cost, they will go find someone else who will.
It doesn't have to be a blank check. It could be a flat "let's see what can be built in six months for $100k"
If you have examples showing you can get work done, someone would be willing to commit to that very specific amount, because something could come of it. Then you both decide from there if they want to
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's totally different if you can tell them what it will cost; in that case they'll go to someone else who tells them it will cost less.
Re: (Score:2)
For the software developer that missed that class in Business 101, a budget is an estimate of future costs vs potential funds
Just like any other comparison from software to real world objects, yours fails because the real world object is far more predictable - you have a budget because you know about what is coming in, and then you plan about what you can spend.
Well what happens to your precious budget when the inflow of money varies by 10x, as happens with real time spent on a software project? You can t
Re: (Score:3)
Is the F-35 a real world object? How about those road tunnels in Boston?
Re: (Score:2)
that's like saying that this message thread is a movement.
well, if enough people hop on the thread -and do something- it is a movement.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's anything like Twitter movements, then you should really take some Immodium.
Re: (Score:2)
It's Twitter. They could allow 160MB of characters and still not have any depth.
We have this already; it's called agile (Score:2, Insightful)
We have this already; it's called agile. Forget about the scrum and the planning meetings, they're get emphasized by shitty teams and PHBs because they're something people are used to, namely meetings, and they're easy to do. They're not required and arguably the least important aspects of agile.
The point of agile has always been:
1) Figure out what the most important feature you need to do next.
2) Build it and make sure it's rock solid.
3) Keep repeating #1 and #2 until the client is satisfied.
You add on t
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot that sometimes you need to stop when the client runs out of money, and agilistas mostly strive for that endpoint rather than shipping a completed work.
Re: (Score:2)
"You forgot that sometimes you need to stop when the client runs out of money"
Agile focus on each deliverable being, well, deriverable: when the customer runs out of money it should get a fully viable product.
"agilistas mostly strive for that endpoint rather than shipping a completed work."
Another tenet of agilism is that it is a thing of the customer as much as it is a thing of developers. If the customer doesn't make its part is no surprise it ends up with burned fingers.
Re: (Score:2)
No, Agile focuses on each sprint ending in an output that does something -- ideally something sensible, but not necessarily something useful. If you're replacing an existing process or product, it is not useful until it becomes more functional or efficient than what it replaces, and that will probably take many sprints.
Every time I hear agilistas talk about their tenets, I am reminded of Zed A. Shaw's rebuttal [programmin...fucker.com] to them, and how they don't have effective counter-arguments to his "what they mean" interpretati
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
is giving estimates without a detailed design.
Imagine this interaction:
Customer: I want you to build me a house.
Contractor: Ok, How many square feet?
Customer: I don't know. When can you start?
Contractor: We can't start until we have plans drawn up.
Customer: I don't have time for that. How much will it cost?
Contractor: I can give you a rough idea once we've nailed down the square footage, number of stories, type of foundation, and some other details.
Customer: You are wasting my time with all these questions.
Contractor: Go Away.
Yet software developers agree to this situation, or are forced to agree to it, all the time.
Re: (Score:3)
And building a house is a fairly simple task compared to writing some programs. You should better compare software to digging tunnels in the mountains. You never know what type of stone is ahead, and if you reach sand, you have to cool it so that it's stable etc.
You can make small test drills in order to find that out, but you won't know it for the complete length of the tunnel. And if management now demands that the tunnel has to be larger, it means alot of effort, the longer your tunnel already is.
Re: (Score:3)
You should better compare software to digging tunnels in the mountains. You never know what type of stone is ahead, and if you reach sand, you have to cool it so that it's stable etc.
and yet tunnel diggers manage to work on-time and on-budget over and over and over again...
Re: (Score:2)
But they don't. Seriously, they don't.
Re: (Score:2)
And building a house is a fairly simple task compared to writing some programs.
And writing a program is a fairly simple task compared to building some houses.
That was the OP's whole POINT. If you have clear and complete architectural and engineering plans, both can usually be estimated with reasonable accuracy. If you don't, then neither can.
Re: (Score:2)
I think people that are good at estimates are doing the same things over and over. Such as adding a small feature to an existing product. But designing and building a new product from scratch, you just can't estimate that.
A: "How long will it take to write the driver?"
B: "I don't know, we don't have documentation yet."
A: "Well make a wild ass guess then, I need a number to fill in."
B: "Um, 6 months."
A: "Stop sandbagging."
B: "Ok, six hours."
A: "Really, that fast?"
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Essentially, he says if you want people to treat you like a professional, then you need to act like a professional. I highly recommend that book, it's good.
Refusing to do estimates is not acting like a professional.
Re: (Score:2)
Any time you are putting an estimate on the table without sensible requirements behind it, you are gambling.
Then get the sensible requirements. Work with the customer to figure out what they want and need (and maybe also what they think they want).
That is part of being professional.
Re: (Score:2)
No, an estimate isn't a gamble. It only becomes a gamble if you treat it as a target or a promise, and commit resources to it. The real problem may be not allowing an estimate to change as more information comes in.
I don't know how long it takes to build the average house, but I'd guess between a week and a year. I'm sure people who build them all the time have a pretty good idea (along with the uncertainties) assuming some implicit context like where you're having the conversation. If you expect a mans
Re:The other real problem (Score:2)
Customer: build this
Developer: OK, it should take X
Customer: great
Customer: why is it late?
Developer: oh, I used a bunch of new technologies and techniques. Now it does all this crap you never asked for, but I was able to pad my resume.
Customer: but it doesn't even do what I asked for
Developer: you idiot, you didn't spec it correctly.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't that known as "gathering requirements"?
It can be difficult and they can change and they will probably be incomplete ... but as you get more experience you should be better prepared to deal with those issues.
I've seen a company build a new production center and not know where the people would be who would be operating it. Some of it was backwards. We ended up putting down tape to delineate the different areas so they could be painted. So yeah, stupidity is rampant.
But the contractors all got paid. They
More of a Problem (Score:2)
Giving estimates without a detailed design is bad.
But the thing is, often giving estimates WITH a detailed design is no better.
So much of software development is utterly variable - perhaps you get a guy who doesn't know some aspect of the system they are building in and needs an extra week, while another person does not. That alone is a whole week lost or gained depending on perspective.
And there are thousands of things like that in any given bit of software. The approach you take to design, the overhead
Re: (Score:2)
"The approach you take to design, the overhead of process, even just unexpected interpersonal contention between team members who may not have even been allocated to a project before you are supposed to give an estimate."
Yes. And the way RFPs work are not helping here. Even if we accept the RFP to be an excessively precise one (which is usually not the case) what does exactly the customer expects? For the providers having a team of people twiddling thumbs just in case they win the bid? No. What they usu
Re: (Score:2)
Part of the difference is that a house is a tangible object. You can see it, feel it, smell it, etc. Software is not, it is largely an intellectual excesses. That makes it hard even for good developers. I have even used a house metaphor at times when talking to customers as in "you're asking us to tile the second floor bathroom before we have the foundation in place".
Re: (Score:2)
Replace customer with product/project manager and that sounds right too.
But reality need not intrude on the process. I remember something I worked on that got a product of the year award based solely upon a mock-up when the real product wasn't even functional.
Not time consuming (Score:2)
If you want to remove the "time sucks," get off slashdot, get off twitter. When I turn off the internet while working on difficult code, I literally get twice as much done. I've measured this several times (and you can tell from this comment ho
Re: (Score:2)
One of the major complaints about estimates is that it "takes too long." Seriously, if estimations take any appreciable amount of time, you're doing them wrong.(unless you need to estimate some massive project, in which case you understand why estimates are needed).
Usually this is because you've already estimated it to the best of your ability but the powers above aren't happy with the uncertainty, where they harass you into giving a magic number or narrow little gap or to talk down your estimate until it's the number they're happy with. Or if you're really lucky get a litlte time for research/experimentation/prototyping but in practice it'd just be faster to start on the implementation, if you know this is a task that in practice will need to be done regardless. I've
Re: (Score:2)
Usually this is because you've already estimated it to the best of your ability but the powers above aren't happy with the uncertainty, where they harass you into giving a magic number or narrow little gap or to talk down your estimate until it's the number they're happy with.
If someone makes an estimate for you, or forces you to make a lower estimate, then you have no obligation to meet that estimate.
Be professional, and hit your estimates, but learn to let people know that things take time. These are soft skills.
Re:Not time consuming (Score:4, Insightful)
If someone makes an estimate for you, or forces you to make a lower estimate, then you have no obligation to meet that estimate.
Yes, you do. It's called keeping your job.
If your job depends on you meeting impossible estimates, then you're not going to be in it very long, no matter how hard you try.
Be honest (Score:5, Interesting)
Estimates should be used to prioritize features (cost / benefit) as opposed to being used to set hard deadlines.
Estimates should be one of "hours", "days", "weeks", or "months". It is fairly easy for most people to differentiate between features that take hours to implement vs weeks. In my experience, exact durations with multiples for padding have proven to be less useful / accurate than the former method.
Re: (Score:3)
Estimates should be used to prioritize features (cost / benefit) as opposed to being used to set hard deadlines.
I have argued for a long time that, when managing projects, people should focus less on deadlines and requirements, and more on prioritization. For example, all the stakeholders can agree on a project to be completed with a certain feature set by a deadline of November 1st for a budget of $20k, but often enough, that's not really the information you need to know. What's just as important as knowing those project requirements is knowing, when you reach the point where not all of those requirements can be m
Re: (Score:2)
wtf is a 'user story'. are those like comments?
Re: (Score:3)
A user story is a short description of some functionality in a certain stile:
As an anonymous user
I want to be able to browse the web site
to see if there are interesting articles.
As a logged on user
I want to be able to post on the web site
to comment on other posts.
As a moderator
I want to have the option to up- or down mod other posts
so that the quality of posts is shown with their rank/mod level.
User stories are usually written in that mantra: ... role
As
what: feature to implement
why: benefit
The point is that
Re: (Score:2)
And how long do you think it takes and how many people are involved before the first shovel hits the ground on a major new construction project?
Re: (Score:2)
And how long do you think it takes and how many people are involved before the first shovel hits the ground on a major new construction project?
Once you have the land surveyed it takes six months, mostly due to the approval process for construction permit. If the approval process alone did not take 2 months then it would take far far less than six months. Architects are damn quick repurposing an existing mall plan for different geography.
Re: Be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
> Agile is a literal suicide pact.
To be fair, any process can be when the process is considered more important than actually getting things done, but with Agile it seems to happen more often than not.
Re: (Score:2)
"Agile is a literal suicide pact"
In fact it can be so. Agile was meant to be people and results over processes, with a strong accent in empowering people. But then, what happens when you empower stupid people? "A literal suicide pact" sounds a good aproximation.
Downward Spiral (Score:2)
in the 90s we got Extreme Programming, followed by Agile.
Now we get #NoEstimates. I think we can do better.
Re: (Score:2)
Extrem programming is-an agile method. :D
So saying Agile came after XP makes no sense
And in agile methods you do estimations ... but in our times usually not based on time but complexity.
Re: (Score:3)
Agile Manifesto - February 11-13, 2001
Extreme Programming Explained - published October 1999
That's good enough to say "it came first"
As long as you understand, I'm not going to argue about the definition of "first."
And yes, I learned this tip about estimation from agile:
When you make an estimate, afterwards check to see how accurate the estimate was, and use it to improve the next time.
Using this method, over time I've gotten fairly good at not missing estimates. The only times I miss are
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agile Manifesto - February 11-13, 2001
Extreme Programming Explained - published October 1999
Does not change the fact that XP is an agile method, too
Re:Downward Spiral (Score:4, Interesting)
Initial Estimates Stupidity (Score:2)
When I was working on a videogame a number of years ago, I was asked by the publisher to come up with an initial schedule. We had a more or less fixed deadline, and while we knew roughly what we were going to be working on, the design phase of the game hadn't even begun. I started working on a very rough outline of the phases of the game development based on my previous experience with such projects. Naturally, it was somewhat vague, because we didn't have a design yet.
The publisher rejected the timeline
Not a developer, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll admit that I'm not a developer, so I may not have a firm grasp on the relevance of everything being talked about. However, I've managed my share of projects, and I definitely think there's reason to doubt the value of estimates for all kinds of projects. Software development projects are not unique in that regard.
Now, I want to start by pointing out the obvious that you often have to make some kind of estimate. Even if the estimate isn't very precise, you have to make some kind of guess-- is this going to take 1 day, 6 months, or 5 years? Being practical, people have to have some idea of what they're getting into, or they can't make decisions.
On the other hand, estimate can only be accurate insofar as the scope of the project is well defined and well understood. For tasks that you do frequently and know exactly what needs to happen, accurate estimates are not very difficult. Even if you are bad at estimating, you can measure how much time and money is spent on those repetitive tasks, and then use that data to figure out how much time and money it typically takes. However, as the scope of work is less well defined, or the nature of the work is less well known, the accuracy of the estimate will be worse.
Imagine building a house. If you're building 100 houses in a development, and you do that work often, and you've already build 30 houses and know how much the labor and materials cost, then you can probably make a good guess of how much time and money it will take to build the remaining 70. However, if someone asks you to "fix all the problems with their house," and you don't know what shape their house is in, what it means to "fix" it, what the laws are regarding construction in the area, or what the local materials/labor cost, then your estimate won't be worth much.
And this brings me back to the issue of "precision" rather than "accuracy". I think part of the issue is to provide an appropriate expectation of precision when providing estimates. I frequently have to provide estimates, and some of them are wildly wrong, but when I'm not confident in the estimate I'm providing, I'll also provide some kind of disclaimer. I admit that I don't know all the details about the situation I'm getting into, and that my estimate could be off. The thing that I'm saying will take 6 weeks might take 2 months. Maybe 2.5 months. Maybe more. Not 6 months-- at least not unless there's something really unexpected or some kind of mission-creep.
But this is really part of a larger problem: the ineffectual nature of "plans". There's a famous quote, something along the lines of, "no battle plan survives the first contact with the enemy". Again, there are projects where the scope is defined and the work to be done is well understood, and in those cases, you can do conventional project planning. You can set milestone dates and make gantt charts, and develop a whole timeline and budget. But on the other hand, Donald Rumsfeld was on to something when he talked about "unknown unknowns". Often when you are embarking on a project, you're not even aware of the obstacles you're going to face, and so you can't account for them. This doesn't mean there's no point in developing a plan or a schedule. It means that your schedule has to be flexible in proportion to the likelihood of "unknown unknowns" and other contingencies outside of your control.
I think if you want to improve the situation, the answer isn't to stop making estimates or project plans, but to develop better methods for quickly estimating the precision of your estimates, providing a margin of error, or the level of flexibility needed in a project. However, I think the #NoEstimates people are correct to point out that there is often diminishing returns on trying to set deadlines and budgets. It doesn't make sense to spend a week refining your plans for a two-week project.
Re: (Score:3)
There's another side to that story as well -- most programming positions are actually not new development. Even if you're getting in early on a project, there's probably already a lot of framework code in place and likely a design. If y
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, when you don't know the scope in advance, you need to FLIP the estimate into a maximum allowed effort. Ask the customer how much they are willing to spend on the problem for now, and then do all that you can for that amount and cycle back. When you report how much you did, you'll also know much better how much is left to do. Then you can make another ask.
Works every time.
The counter-point article does not help (Score:2)
From the article:
That gave our VP enough confidence that he "only" doubled our estimates and offered the customer a firm fixed price. This contract was a success for all concerned: we came in under our estimated time and cost
So two highly experienced developers came up with an "estimate" that was off by nearly a factor of two (in came in "under time" but surely not by half).
How is that really an estimate? From the standpoint of raising that as a banner in support of estimates, how is that success? Remembe
There are formulas for this. (Score:4, Informative)
There are *several* formulas to do an estimate and several more to tell you if your estimates are on track.
If you understand why estimates are required, you are a business person, if you understand why they are so difficult you are a developer. Managing estimates is a 'Project Management' task and a good PM will keep the pressure of the team by also managing the stakeholder expectations, which is what we are really talking about here.
Complex estimates are closer to the contract and simple task estimates are closer to the metal. If anyone asks for an 'accurate estimate', run - they are an oxymoron who won't de-scope so that deliverables are met. To me it is an immediate sign of project failure.
Estimates are just a tool that are a balancing act for getting the budget required to do something. Good estimates are achievable by iterating three simple questions pessimistic, realistic and optimistic estimation for a smaller task of a large project. After that there are several other formula to determine if you are ahead, behind or on schedule. Ahead or on schedule - great, behind - de-scope. What the final product looks like is a function of the contract that determines the critical path and managing the expectations to get there. Estimations on a small project however are usually a waste of time.
The last thing you want to do is go back to an accounting department or client for more budget because the estimates are way off anymore than having no estimate at all and asking for a big bucket of money that won't get approved and no developers will ever get employed to do that project.
Using 120 characters to discuss such a complex subject, that can't possibly hope to encapsulate the arguments required to understand it, is pointless.
"My God, it's full of waterfalls!" (Score:2)
In reading these comments the phrase "Giving estimates without a detailed design is bad" pops up in one form or another. Basically that is asking for a waterfall. I am somewhat uneasy how often it has appeared even in this day and age. Here are my observations on the topic:
1) Forget good requirements, no one has them. No one knows what exactly the software will do at the beginning of the process. One thing I am certain of is that in about 18 months, if you are competent and lucky, you will start to have a g
Re: (Score:2)
" Often too software requires a review of business process which shed light on how a business is *actually* run, not how management *thinks* it is run. This will cause requirements shift."
That's a great line, and your anecdote [1] is awesome. Thanks for sharing.
Re: (Score:2)
Forget good requirements, no one has them.
....
It is never really done.
... and the loop is closed.
Though on global scale, IME, another problem is that the former is relatively well accepted, but the later should be never mentioned to the customer. Or to your sales. Or to your PM. Or to your colleagues.
Most people need the certainty about the results. Because result is something concrete, while the process is something distant. Because most people spend to little time understanding the whole development process and their role in it.
P.S.
Lots of little releases to throw them a bone and to get feedback
Not all customers are OK with that.
Payer vs. payee (Score:2)
Those who are paying the bills want estimates. Those who are getting the money want a blank check. It's that simple!
There are ways to create good estimates, but it does require discipline and training. Steve McConnell wrote an excellent book on the subject. Unfortunately, many software developers aren't well trained in this art. This is a serious failing in many of our computer science degree programs.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If only all programmers were as conscientious as you!
Re: (Score:2)
You are adding a feature to your project. Should you:
A) Spend time integrating a library into your project
B) Spend time writing the code to do that feature.
If you don't know how long B will take, you can't possibly make the right decision. Estimation is just one part of the skill involved here, in addition you'll need to know how the library will affect the long-term stability of y
Estimates are useful if used correctly (Score:4, Interesting)
Estimates are useless as a measure of how well an engineer is performing. How far he is ahead or behind schedule only indicates the extent to which he was able to get away with padding his estimate in the first place.
That said, estimates ARE very valuable when you have a complex set of interlocking projects and resources that can be tasked in different places. This is especially true if external pressure require that a project be done on an exact date.
To take an extreme example, if the launch window for Europa is at a known date, the spacecraft firmware must be fully tested and installed by that date. Working backwards that says when the first version must be ready. The estimate helps decide what resources should be applied, and later it lets you know if you are so far behind that you need to change the launch date to the next window (over a year away). That affects budget etc.
At SLAC we have complex projects that require the work of lots of people to all come together. This results in very rigid schedules - There is typically a 2 month window for major upgrades, if you miss it, you wait a year. If someone working for me doesn't like doing estimates, I basically say "we need a guess. I can guess or you can, but since you are doing the work, your guess will be better than mine".
In the #ESTIMATES Camp (Score:5, Interesting)
I have worked in the industry for 20+ years and here are my observations - granted, I have worked in smaller companies (i.e 25-4000) and startups.
Estimates work as a means to determine the work effort for a given set of features. They are not to be used for setting schedules and deadlines by themselves. They are to be used for budgeting and cost planning. And, they are not to be done without a detailed design meeting the agreed upon requirements.
Unless your client is very rich and/or stupid or you have a large surplus of venture capital in your startup, you better be concerned with the work effort and time to have your product in a usable state. When you can tell a client that a project is going to take time X and cost Y and meet those values, you gain credibility and trust. In the digital advertising world, those with credibility and trust become the agency of record (AOR). And, the client will stick with you as their AOR until you royally screw up and fail to deliver what was promised, when promised and for the agreed upon price.
You DON'T ask a developer how long something will take - they invariably will underestimate the work effort. Instead, at least until you have measured delivery rates for your team members, you use industry standards. You can ask the developer and then compare their estimates with the actual time and effort. When their estimates start matching up, you can ask them estimate their own assigned work. It can be a good learning experience for them.
Some projects don't require estimates. We had projects that fit a template model based earlier work. We knew how long it took, on average, to fill the various fields of the template. Throw in the project management, QA and deployment components and its pretty easy to do.
When people claim Agile isn't compatible with estimates, it's probably because the team isn't concerned about documentation or planning. They tell you that the system has too many variables and they don't have time or resources to keep the design up to date. I call BS. If you can't do it, then add someone to the team who can. There are great tools for doing design work and capturing requirements at all phases of a project - use them.
Even with Agile, you should layout out a basic design or framework in the early stages of the project. Then, you can determine how long other features will take and what their dependencies are before you attempt to implement them and emptying the client's wallet. Then, you base the number of sprints based on that information. Since you are supposed to have a working product at the end of each sprint, you should be able to tell the client what features will be in each deliverable and cost. If they want to change the requirements or add new features or change functionality, you still have to plan how long those features will take and in which sprint you will deliver a product that meets those changes.
Re: (Score:2)
Then, you base the number of sprints based on that information.
I think your brain is hardwired to the waterfall method, and you're thinking of Agile as a series of smaller waterfalls, one after the other. The whole point of Agile is admitting that you don't know where you're going to end up. You try to figure out how to test your basic assumptions as soon as possible -- no, really, as soon as possible, maybe even without writing a single line of code -- then iterate based on what you discover.
Estimating is easy (Score:2)
choices (Score:4, Insightful)
As they saying goes: Fast, cheap, good - pick any two.
You can usually solve one problem by another. If you see you can't hold the deadline, you can throw more manpower at it (not cheap anymore) or compromise on quality. If you see the budget runs out, you can put the project into idle times (not fast anymore) or compromise on quality.
Sadly, quality is the part that management, customers, clients and developers understand the least. Everyone understands deadlines - either you are done on that day or you are not. Everyone understands money and to convert developer man-hours into money is not so difficult. But quality is tricky. If it runs, ship - because management, customers, etc. they see if it is running, but not what's going on under the hood. And developers too often don't understand that quality is subject to combinatorial explosion - shortcuts don't add up, they multiply.
But because it's the least-understood part of the equation, and compromises matter so much but are not easily visible as long as the core operation functions, software in generally is so absolutely shoddy.
Re: (Score:3)
Not a useful saying for budgeting.
Aphorisms are never good for hard numbers. They are good for making a point in a concise way.
clarity of expectations (Score:2)
I've been looking into building a house recently, and it taught me something about software development:
To understand what I would get for how much money, I went to a "park" of houses. 20 or so houses of different styles and sizes, with price tags. So by spending a few hours walking through them all, I could get a pretty good understanding of what I would get for which price. From that point, I can start an informed discussion with a company asking for the house I want, based on what I saw, with an idea of
And replace them with what? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A method's accuracy is less important than the persuasiveness of its arguments about why it was inaccurate.
Re: (Score:2)
A method's accuracy is less important than the persuasiveness of its arguments about why it was inaccurate.
In other words, "how can I take this failed estimate and blame it on someone else?" lol
In that case, your company has serious problems, of which estimates are the smallest.
Re: (Score:3)
Book writing duration is random. This is known. Why should book authors be special in their inability to estimate task times using well known probability distributions? They've been writing books for thousands of years.
Finish your draft late? Publisher won't pay you.
Better yet, authors should be properly licensed.
Re:Huh? Probability. (Score:4, Informative)
Finish your draft late? Publisher won't pay you.
That's more common than you think. Especially if you're not already an established name, contracts usually have terms stating that if you don't meet the deadline, the publisher has the right to cancel the contract, and demand return of the advance (if any). Whether they actually exercise this right or not varies.
Re:Well, it's about time... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that having enough time taken to make a good product is a good thing.
However, there does need to be some accountability to business goals and the ability to actually get features to customers in a reasonable time frame.
Prioritization is important. There are times where something has to get done by a certain date, or you'd have been better off working on something else because you lost the customer who wanted the feature to the company who did produce it.
In some ways, I blame customer expectations. If they're always hunting to get the most features they can, for the cheapest possible price, they're pretty much accepting the bugs and design flaws that come from software houses that are fulfilling their criteria. And that's basically what happens. If customers did something like insist that bugs in the software would require significant financial penalties or credits as part of their contract, they'd get a better product, but they'd also pay through the nose for it, and probably also have to wait a substantial amount of time for it.
So, I think we're at an equilibrium. Customers hate shitty software, but as long as they pay for it, that's what they're going to get because they don't choose the quality software over the quick and cheap.
And until that changes, businesses need to be able to predict when their software is going to be more or less complete.
Re: (Score:2)
"And until that changes, businesses need to be able to predict when their software is going to be more or less complete."
It is usally said the customer is always right. In this case it means it is the customer the one that has to move first, which it's difficult because the customer doesn't have the expertise which makes software development basically into a "market for lemons" which, in turn, it's an stable albeit undesirable state for as long as the good (or service) sold is percieved as of any value.
Re:Well, it's about time... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many products which have a very limited life span as well. Products who serve a purpose six months from now, are retired in two years time, and never touched again. Products where failing to deliver on time is as bad as failing to deliver at all.
Then there are the projects and products which are only part of a greater whole, where delivering late means holding up that entire larger project, and which has a financial impact which may well exceed the total budget of your entire project.
Despite that, I've never encountered an estimate that was any more than the gut feel of someone giving their best guess based on their experience and what they know so far about the requirements. Customers really need to wake up to the fact that changing requirements and vague/unfinished requirements mean that the actual delivery could be +/- 50% of the estimate, or even more.
The worst overruns I've ever seen were always on projects where the tools to be used were selected before the developers were ever consulted about what made sense to use for developing the project. The inane buzzword projects where someone decides they're going to use NoSQL, or SQL, or flat files, or whatever storage system because that's "company policy" or because some "architect" was in love with that particular technology or product.
Woe betide anyone who lets the buzzword mafia decide the course of their project, for they are doomed to expensive failure in the vast majority of cases.
Re: (Score:2)
We're being asked to create a time machine. The physics for this does not yet exist. Execs tell us we have 12 months and they're already negotiating with a customer on this. Whoops it won't get done, no matter how many meetings we hold to discuss why we haven't achieved a scientific breakthrough yet.
It's extreme, but there are real life roadblocks that you can't overcome and execs can never understand this (they don't even understand how their own products work). 9 months late on a project I was working
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
#Moo
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, are you in one of those jobs where you implement the same thing over and over again, only slightly different each time? That's a shitty job or a shitty design. If you're doing something new it's unlikely you have experience enough to estimate the time. Time estimation works well for non-programming tasks that have been done before, not new tasks that have not been done before. Management has been screw