Re:Fear of over-engineering has killed engineering altogether
by lemonwaterlime on Friday July 26, 2024 @07:45PM
(#41083336)
I think we’re in agreement. In my mind, you can even get delivery risk from a safety/security standpoint. As in, the product should be developed on time while accounting for the security/safety stuff. And you get there by placing risk front and center for the entire system from the beginning.
I.e. the risk that a project won't be delivered with the expected features and by the expected end date
Fundamentally, time estimates are useless without a coupled risk/certainty metric.
If you ask me how long something is going to take, and I believe it'll take somewhere between 3 months (worst case) and 2 weeks (best case), what number do I reply to you with? And how do you interpret that number?
And how does my reporting change as we get closer to delivery?
Reducing the size of work being estimated band-aids the problem, by shrinking the absolute magnitude of the bounds, but doesn't fundamentally solve it.
Common heuristics like "double how long you think it's going to take" are other ways this appears.