[Boulder.pm] one piece of advice

[Evelyn Mitchell]

* On 2002-12-17 03:53 Chip Atkinson <chip at rmpg.org> wrote:
> The biggest problem that we at work in the IT department face is chronic
> under-estimation of the time required to complete a task.  There are many
> symptoms/causes, but the end result is nearly always disaster.
> Specifically, what's been going on is that we think something will take "4
> hours" to complete.  The problems are that it's only an estimate on how
> long it takes to get the first iteration on the "core" part of the task.
> The other iterations are ignored, as are the steps necessary to automate
> and integrate the finished core into our system, including the billing
> parts.

I use a couple of different techniques to reduce this problem:
   1) I try an break the task down into the smallest pieces possible, then
   ask 'What am I forgetting?'. This helps to avoid the scope problem.

   2) I track how long it took to do a task, and use that as a baseline for
   estimating similar things in the future. 

It's similar to the _Discipline for Software Engineering_ by Watts
Humphrey, but not nearly so rigorous.

Also, I try to be very clear about the parts of the task I'm comfortable
estimating closely, and the parts which I'm not so sure about how long
their going to take. 

-- 
Regards,                    tummy.com, ltd 
Evelyn Mitchell             Linux Consulting since 1995
efm at tummy.com               Senior System and Network Administrators
                            http://www.tummy.com/