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A comment on Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and how to develop them?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and h... by rzzzt on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @02:00PM (#11910867)
Do you have any suggestions for becoming more accurate when it comes to estimating effort?

I find that my estimates are generally all over the place and multiple attempts at predicting how much time it will take to complete an assignment don't converge as time passes. Even though I had seen and been given diverse tasks over the course of my work, I can not really pick a previous item of similar magnitude for reference.

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Re:Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and h... by alistairSH on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @02:49PM (#11911177)
I'm a chronic under-estimator. So, whenever we're in grooming or sprint planning, I make it a habit to ask the other members of the team if the size/hours make sense, or are straight out of "Al's world".

In those occasions where I'm asked to provide a WAG to an executive or salesperson, I always multiply my first thought by 150-200%. Maybe even 300% if there's an external stakeholder (3rd party integration, something for a specific client, etc).

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Re:Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and h... by ColinCochrane on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @03:41PM (#11911587)
I've found that https://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Deve... is a fantastic resource for improving estimation.
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Re:Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and h... by hluska on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @02:21PM (#11910988)
I'm not terribly good at this, but I've had some luck taking the first answer that pops to mind and multiplying it by three. It's a crude method, but over time, it has worked well for me.
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Re:Ask HN: What non-technical skills make a senior dev and h... by avn2109 on Wednesday June 15, 2016 @05:02PM (#11912121)
This usually works OK in practice for small or medium projects, but as Brooks points out in the Mythical Man Month, you are also tripling your estimation error. This can cause a lot of divergence for longer projects.
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