Why software projects take longer than you think – a statistical model

Re:Why software projects take longer than you think – a stat... by Consultant32452 on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @11:40AM (#19674602)

The biggest problem is that engineers tend to think in man-hours and managers think in calendar time. If I say a project will take 2 days, it'll probably take 2 days, but it might span 4 calendar days because other things are going on.

The biggest thing that has helped me here is to keep a running list of my tasks, an informal Gantt chart, and show it to the manager whenever they ask me about an estimate. This helps me communicate in a way they understand.

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Re:Why software projects take longer than you think – a stat... by Bartweiss on Tuesday April 16, 2019 @01:50PM (#19675721)

There's a lot of bad to be said about how companies use story points and velocity and all the rest, but I do greatly appreciate the way they delink "amount of work" from "delivery date". It's a nice built-in way of expressing time requirements separately from schedule, which is a lot smoother than constantly reminding people that the difference exists.

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