Re:Forecast, don't guesstimate your software projects
by pif on Saturday June 13, 2020 @06:05AM
(#23508330)
> our PR firmed lined up exclusives with journalists on date X
That is the problem.
Wait for the product to get to an acceptable form, and then call the press in for tomorrow!
Re:Forecast, don't guesstimate your software projects
by szaroubi on Sunday June 14, 2020 @08:11PM
(#23522594)
Getting a PR or marketing campaign up must be done in parallel to the dev work.
It can take a few months to find the right journalists in the right publications , get their attention and get their time.
On another note, some product launches are also times with fixed date events (Back to school (media industry), CES (Consumer electronics), any other expo in any other industry). it is key to time the dev deliverables. and if you need to chose between two features to dev, well, you need estimates as in inputs.
Estimates are not perfect, you should not spend 5 man days to plan 2 months of work. Planning can be done with guestimates and best effort and when done right, are super useful.
Re:Forecast, don't guesstimate your software projects
by benhurmarcel on Saturday June 13, 2020 @07:20AM
(#23508676)
You don't always have that luxury.
Let's say you're developing a product and it will need to go though physical testing. You need to book a test facility fairly in advance.
Or sometimes you might have to guarantee a fix date to a customer for example.
Re:Forecast, don't guesstimate your software projects
by Aeolun on Saturday June 13, 2020 @04:47AM
(#23507945)
Given what we’ve seen in the article, that estimates are often off by a factor of 4, what does this really help other teams? It might make them feel good about themselves when the dev team inevitably tells them they’re not going to meet the target date, but that’s not really helpful overall.
Re:Forecast, don't guesstimate your software projects
by mdorazio on Saturday June 13, 2020 @05:47AM
(#23508242)
Because off by a factor of 4 is still far superior to having no idea whatsoever about what's getting built, when it might be done, and what's potentially slipping. I can't plan anything else very well if I have to wait for enough data to forecast, which itself might not even be accurate.
1. Coordination with other teams or real-world events. In most decent-sized companies there are many people involved in a product or feature launch: product marketing, brand marketing, support, not to mention other dev teams. Many times these teams will need to broadcast external, hard dates (e.g. "our PR firmed lined up exclusives with journalists on date X") Being substantially late can affect lots of other people. However, importantly, this is not always the case. If you're estimating for the benefit of coordinating teams, be very explicit about which other teams depend on your estimates, and why.
2. To prioritize and decide which features to build. Prioritization is solely about balancing expected benefit with expected cost, so if you're wildly off about the cost, your time may have been better spent building something else. Again, though, if you underestimate by a bit, but in the end come up and say "I wouldn't have really worked on things in a different order anyway" then nothing was really lost. I can definitely think of cases, though, where if I really knew how long something would take at the start I would have chosen to do something else, or at least do it in a different way.