Re:How fair do you think time estimate within 30% is? Plus/m...
by b0rsuk on Saturday May 11, 2019 @11:27PM
(#19889925)
That's true as long as the people are not being bullied. In my case, I estimated something I barely worked on in an area of code I barely knew to take 2 weeks. When the boss left, the remaining 3 people kept telling me to estimate it to 5 days "because you know what boss thinks about 2 weeks". Then told me that 5 days is just an initial estimate and it can be later extended. I responded that likewise, 2 weeks can be scaled down and I'll be happy to be proven wrong. No response from them. I kept repeating the question.
One trick is to make them really small chunks of less than 4 hours. When you add up the chunks they tend to average out quite accurately.
Estimations are quite a pain though. I've spent days doing and negotiating estimations of things that take less than a day to do. And one downside is Parkinson's Law - if you overestimate, it slows down development, and if you underestimate, it's far worse.
While you can make your estimations more accurate, you can't do it without putting a heck lot of effort and manpower... which defeats the purpose of doing it for efficiency.