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Ask Slashdot: Are Accurate Software Development Time Predictions a Myth? (medium.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the fact-or-fiction dept.

New submitter DuroSoft writes: For myself and the vast majority of people I have talked to, this is the case. Any attempts we make to estimate the amount of time software development tasks will take inevitably end in folly. Do you find you can make accurate estimates, or is it really the case, as the author, DuroSoft Technologies' CTO/Co-CEO Sam Johnson, suggests via Hacker Noon, that "writing and maintaining code can be seen as a fundamentally chaotic activity, subject to sudden, unpredictable gotchas that take up an inordinate amount of time" and that therefore attempting to make predictions in the first place is itself a waste of our valuable time?

1 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This always worked for me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Take your developer's estimate
    Increase that by 40%
    Double that

    It seems incredibly arbitrary, but I have learned that the 40% covers testing and implementation, while doubling the entire amount allows for the customer seeing the first result and _then_ telling you what they really want.

    Try it, you'll like it

    HA. You have no experience in management obviously. Here's how I do it:

    Take the developer's estimate
    Tell them it's too long
    Halve it
    Tell the customer
    Project gets behind
    Start the death march (60+ hours for everyone but management, we have families!)
    Project gets behinder
    Customer is pissed, but doesn't really have any other options
    Project comes out OK, but is much later than even the original estimate that was halved
    Customer is happy, management is happy, engineers are disposable
    Go to Hawaii with my bonus!