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Overconfidence: Why You Suck At Making Development Time Estimates
Dan Milstein from Hut 8 Labs has written a lengthy post about why software developers often struggle to estimate the time required to implement their projects. Drawing on lessons from a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman, he explains how overconfidence frequently leads to underestimations of a project's complexity. Unfortunately, the nature of overconfidence makes it tough to compensate. Quoting:
"Specifically, in many, many situations, the following three things hold true: 1- 'Expert' predictions about some future event are so completely unreliable as to be basically meaningless 2- Nonetheless, the experts in question are extremely confident about the accuracy of their predictions. 3- And, best of all: absolutely nothing seems to be able to diminish the confidence that experts feel. The last one is truly remarkable: even if experts try to honestly face evidence of their own past failures, even if they deeply understand this flaw in human cognition they will still feel a deep sense of confidence in the accuracy of their predictions. As Kahneman explains it, after telling an amazing story about his own failing on this front: 'The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.'"
Always tripple all estimates. That way you always look like a miracle worker.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I often find another problem is management's refusal to accept the estimate of the developer. I am usually pretty good at estimation. Here is what usually transpires for me:
Manager: "How long will it take you?"
Developer: "2 months."
Manager: "You don't have 2 months. You only have 1 month. Redo your estimate. How long now?"
Developer: "2 months."
Manager: "You don't have 2 months. You only have 1 month. Redo your estimate. How long now?"
At this point I feel like saying:
Developer: "Why are you asking for my input? Just write down 1 month. And do you want me to tell you I will be 1 month late right now or in 1 month from now?"
La Forge: The Captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.
Scotty: Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way.
But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
La Forge: Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: How long will it really take?
La Forge: An hour!
Scotty: Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would *really* take, did ya?
La Forge: Well, of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.
- TNG 6x04
I hate making estimates. I'm always, ALWAYS wrong. I always know I'm GOING to be wrong.
I've been trying to fix this for 12 years. I thought it was just inexperience talking, but I'm a grown-up programmer now. 'Senior', by some estimates. And yet I still have a hard time estimating the time of getting things up and running. I write one thing, and four things that I couldn't have anticipated crop up. This is particularly true in my industry (video games) where you're often working with an engine that's a few years old, and other people are in the middle of working on it, and specs are changing under everyone all the time. Things that look straightforward end up taking bad detours through networking components that nobody else understands because that part was written years ago and those programmers aren't around anymore.
Man, this story makes me feel a lot better about myself.
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
My estimates suck because:
Project leader: Ok, so we need to know how long it will take for you to do X
Me: I'm not sure, that's an entirely new API, proprietary to the vendor, there's almost no documentation and their website has a support forum filled with questions and basically no replys to any of them.
Project leader: Well, we need a number.
Me: Why?
Project leader: I have to fill in this box here... see?
Me: Ok fine, 800 hrs
Project leader: Now hold on a minute, this wont take 800hrs
Me: It could, I have no idea. It's already taken the majority of at least one hour and I don't even know what language it's in.
Project leader: Fine, I'll put down 800hrs, but you're the one that's going to look silly.
POST PROJECT REVIEW ....
Project leader: I can see here your original estimate was 800hrs, and your actual billed time was 1265hrs. What causes led to you missing your estimate, and how can we avoid those in the future.
Me: Don't make estimates.
Project leader: Come on now, I need a real answer.
Me: Why?
Project leader: I have to fill in this box here... see?
Me:
I know I suck at doing development estimates.
A struggle is getting people to even agree on what a development estimate is:
Me: "That will take 2 months of development work."
[two months of interruptions, putting out fires and "prioritization" later]
Other: "Why is this not done? You suck at development estimates."
management/sales: how fast can we get this done?
dev: low 3 weeks, mid 5 weeks, high 9 weeks
management/sales:Great! I was hoping you would say around 2 weeks, because this product is being launched next week, so if we push it, we should be able to get it out the door by tomorrow approval!