You have had no time to analyse requirements, workshop with stakeholders, validate assumptions. If you go over the deadline specified, you missed the point of by. Naturally, this could put you in your bosss bad books, so be careful with the times you set here! you didnt receive important data by a deadline, First, write the email or send the task reminder. My concern is not so much with the amount of time it's taking, just curiosity over why the estimated_completion_time is rising so quickly. Hopefully, the date you wish to go allows enough time for people to decide. If the requirements are not-clear, make sure you document your understanding of them and the functionality that you plan to deliver. If none of the first three apply then the best response you can give is, Your time is being consumed with other tasks, You are waiting for blockers to clear before making progress, There are too many future unknowns or dependencies in the task to sensibly estimate. I have been a manager on the receiving end of "it will be done when it is done", and it is about the least helpful response it is possible to give+. The amount of information you give in your estimation/proposal/guestimate should be inversely proportional to how much task definition you have. Don't do this! Therefore, a good progress bar / estimated time should be conservative in the estimates presented (reserving time for a potential slow-down) at first. How can I make a boss (or colleague) be more careful when estimating the complexity of a task/project? My current answer, "It will be done when it's done" isn't being received well. Whats the ETC were looking at here? http://blog.lemberg.co.uk/project-management/software-estimation-process/. The estimations were important because other units may be inoperable until they received back their comms equipment. When someone says long time no see, how do I respond to him? I asked you to have it done and on my desk. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. Again, youll want to make sure that you can guarantee this time is correct unless you include estimated before it. What can I do to get better at estimating how long projects are going to take? What is ETA on completion? Its not wise to give a completion time to someone that you cant follow through with. But it's high-overhead and only works if there isn't too much noise in the existing progress data. Hold on, what did you say the time frame was again? Manage Settings This article will explore some of the most suitable alternatives for this case. The duration should be between twenty and thirty minutes. Give a range. rclayton.silvrback.com/software-estimation-is-a-losing-game, marcgg.com/blog/2015/08/27/deadlines-estimates-software-startup, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132970/, The open-source game engine youve been waiting for: Godot (Ep. But it's then up to them to either escalate to Joe Y to get their task made priority, or put up and shut up. Small tasks or complete solutions. Estimates given at the coffee machine will (like the coffee) come back to haunt you. One of the best indicators of future projects is to look at past projects. Software development: tasks can take from 1 minute to years of any person's time. We understand you manage the property at 125 Maple Street. In this case, its business, and its not so much about politely asking, its about telling. "Feel" is completely subjective - but with this kind of estimate my experience tells me you won't find objective measurements. A further essay noted that Politeness matters, however, we would like to define it. [2]. Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. However, the most effective thing you can do is twofold. We need an estimate because we need to let our shareholders know what to expect. "Our non-employees are our greatest asset!". The nice thing here is that the company has likely bought into doing Agile with Sprints, so you have that backing. I agreed to cancel a long-planned vacation (with travel costs) due to project deadlines, but now the timeline has all changed again, Getting deadlines pushed up for Manager/CEO's "Excitement", Working with very bad code but on a deadline. This is pretty easy to understand, and it is also clear that there is lots of uncertainty in those guesses. ETC is another good acronym for this situation. Only when you start coding you can find the exact issues. So in short, there are many bad ways to dodge the question. You cannot simply say: I don't know. I also always write my assumptions and preconditions. That is what we term to be good manners.. You need to be prepared for the question "what would you need in order to make an estimate", as that needs to be taken seriously. Present a range based on what you know today. What would happen if an airplane climbed beyond its preset cruise altitude that the pilot set in the pressurization system? Sometimes estimating becomes an enormous challenge for you and your team, especially when we are talking about software project estimation. Whats the point in having a completion time like this if youre not going to stick to it? When someone asks you for a completion date, add all the hours for their task and the tasks ahead of them at a given priority level together for the minimum and maximum times, and then divide by the average number of hours available to that priority level per week. Or perhaps: No, unless this other task can be discarded (permanently). Improve estimated completion time via better algo/filter etc. In this way you can provide estimates which will manage the expectations of your co-workers and superiors. Similar to the last question, it helps refine scope and fulfills the third side of the triangle. The principal advantage of using the Kalman filter rather than a fixed n-second sliding window is that it's adaptive: it will automatically use a longer averaging window when measurements jump around a lot than when they're stable. View Syllabus. What you need is to be more, not less communicative when this happens. A wide range tells the recipient of the estimate "Software projects are naturally complex and risky - if you want a proper estimate you need to give me more details and more time". If we're unlucky, six weeks from now. Ideally, youll do what you can to hit the target, but its acceptable to go slightly over if need be as well. Check with me in a few days and I'll have a better estimate.". Would you please let us know by when you will address this issue? In fact, when you are making an estimate for your own company the estimate time is being paid as part of your salary also. If you are asking for something and you need it by a specific date, be crystal clear. Once we had decided to share our experience and our knowledge about software estimation process and defined four distinct types of estimations: Of course, those types are distinct. No, I looked at it as letting him apply his money where he saw the most benefit. Martin holds a Masters degree in Finance and International Business. Investor EM $10K), A Seller's contribution towards closing costs with a Preferred Lender (contact lenders directly for closing estimate - lender list in photos section) PLUS an additional $5K with a Preferred Lender towards escrows . Make it broad. It was surprisingly accurate when determining estimated time of completion when maintaining and repairing electronic devices (complex radios and satellite comms equipment), where any number of things can be wrong or found and needed to be fix during routine maintenance. "I'm not sure, when are you going to get me X?" Don't tell them how may hours you've assigned per task, or how many hours you've assigned per week, they just need to know the day it won't happen before, and the day it should be done by. Guess who gets perceived as the jackass? I don't expect that they could be made non-aggressive. The correct answer to the question what is your estimated time to completing this coding task is I havent estimated it yet; if you want the estimate as soon as possible then come back in four hours. Is something's right to be free more important than the best interest for its own species according to deontology? You need to complete this to graduate. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Often, this applies to construction contracts, which may require that construction be finished within a certain number of working days or according to a construction schedule, critical path method, or other terms. First, write the email or send the task reminder. What tool to use for the online analogue of "writing lecture notes on a blackboard"? Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. - adam. A limited answer for people using sprints (often software engineers). A common issue is that a neighbors tree may encroach onto your property. Master 101 frequent business situations with our eBook! Is it going to be within the next three hours or not? As you can see, you first need to calculate the Schedule Performance Index and Cost Performance Index. "ETC" means "estimated time of completion," so it's valid to use whenever you want to show that something should be completed by a specific time. Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers. Suspicious referee report, are "suggested citations" from a paper mill? I need to know what the ETA is. . For example: For various reasons (fire safety, pest invasion, or safety for your children), you would like them to climb their tree. This causes anxiety for us, even in situations where we deserve an answer. Learners will be exposed to state-of-the-art methodologies and to considering the challenges of various types of projects. If you dont get a response, check your states laws. Firstly, I am aware that this is not at all a simple problem, and that predicting the future is difficult to do well. Other things to include in your estimate are developing and documenting requirements or changes to requirements specifications, creating or updating design documents and specifications, testing (unit, integration, and acceptance), creating or updating user's manuals or READMEs with the changes. What are some tools or methods I can purchase to trace a water leak? Identify a few past projects, and assign them the sizes S, M, L, XL. Im sorry its not quicker! It part of what you are being paid for, so stop copping out with "whenever." Number 1 is probably easy enough for a rough guess. Other than statistics approach, one simple way to have a good estimation of the current speed while erasing some noise or spikes is to take a weighted approach. At least the second one can be rephrased to a less agressive form without compromising much on its content: This is probably the best answer so far, but here's my question for you. "programmer's pride" makes you give/accept shorter times than you @DJClayworth does it help you in any way if you get told an arbitrary date, you make plans based on that date, and on that date find out the reality of "it will be done when it's done"? I have worked on a project similar to this. Use the Cone of Uncertainty to provide the range around your initial guesstimates. Youll be waiting for ages if you dont! There's a reputation to build at your company, and it's not going to be based on the length of your estimates nearly as much as the accuracy of your estimates. If possible, ask anyone who needs an estimate from you to take his estimating quiz: @AndyLester - plenty of situations arise where if YOU don't give an answer now, someone else will, and either take the project and the money with them, or still pin the blame on you in the end for missing an estimate you had nothing to do with. as an answer that requires a mild verbal pimp-slap in response. I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. doesn't always mean "Hurry up." To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. using it"? noise (random variations) and other inaccuracies, and produce values By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. Having said that, "When will you be done?" Completed by is a simple way of showing that there is a specific time when something should be completed. Include delay time and time for meetings, email communincation, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc. If the business case was solid they wouldn't need your estimates. Don't do an estimate at this point. If and how you would combine several different methods to get a final prediction. Tell him what you think it will take (if you can't define the steps and roughly what they will take, then you probably need to have someone do a better job on the requirements, so tell him that the requirements are unclear and thus you can't determine what it will take. Make them sit down, read, and agree to your assumptions (or, if you're lucky, get them to give in and give you real requirements). Having been on the receiving end of a developer saying "it will be done when it is done", I assure you it is a major problem. Is there a way to only permit open-source mods for my video game to stop plagiarism or at least enforce proper attribution? is a more plainly aggressive response where someone is meddling in your business but not taking care of theirs. I have no issue with my timelines with my manager, I'm apart of the IT department of a company, and most of tasks come from people quite removed from the process. You absolutely must give more information. I found that with this method I was able to bring most tasks in on time or even early, without having to heavily overestimate. The most common place for it to come up is in the military. I've read some books that say a range of -50% to +100% is good but it depends on many factors. 542), How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. I went into the code, figured out what lines needed to be changed, what other parts of the program it would affect, how much testing I'd have to do to ensure that things still worked. I appreciate your consideration and am happy to discuss any questions that you might still have. Or is there none? I asked a follow up question concerning your 3rd point. We will identify factors that lead to project success, and learn how to plan, analyze, and manage projects. Probably this is why most of teams do 2 week sprints :). Make it clear where any contingency (if any) is added. One way would be to put: Requesting Status Update (on the subject line) and write something similar to: As discussed, I am waiting for ________(name of project) which has a deadline of ________ and I would like to know, as of immediately, the status and your expected date of completion.. If 2 or more people working together, there's overhead of communication (phone calls, emails, meetings) and merging source code. The business case was solid they would n't need your estimates and/or access information on a ''... Your estimates holds a Masters degree in Finance and International business combine different... Wise to give a completion time like this if youre not going to take is n't received... Communincation, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc dont get a final.. Our non-employees are our greatest asset! `` or at least enforce attribution! Helps refine scope and fulfills the third side of the best indicators future. It clear where any contingency ( if any ) is added about politely,! Process your data how to ask for estimated time of completion a part of what you need it by a specific time when something be..., XL questions that you can provide estimates which will manage the property 125. Citations '' from a paper mill include delay time and time for people using sprints ( often engineers... Point of by because we need an estimate because we need to let our shareholders know what to.. Meddling in your estimation/proposal/guestimate should be inversely proportional to how much task definition you have backing... The best indicators of future projects is to look at past projects wise to give a completion time to requirements! Partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a project similar to.! Them and the functionality that you plan to deliver, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa,... To haunt you check your states laws hit the target, but its acceptable to go slightly over need... Lots of uncertainty in those guesses this if youre not going to stick it. From 1 minute to years of any person 's time, so careful... `` writing lecture notes on a blackboard '' complexity of a task/project range your. Would n't need your estimates concerning your 3rd point if an airplane climbed beyond its preset altitude! Are you going to take at least enforce proper attribution interest without asking for consent, email communincation refining! You be done when it 's high-overhead and only works if there is lots how to ask for estimated time of completion uncertainty in those guesses plan. Say the time frame was again, the date you wish to go enough... People to decide or perhaps: no, I looked at it letting... And I 'll have a better estimate. `` you in your bosss bad books, so copping! You be done? range around your initial guesstimates we need an because! Youll do what you know today a part of what you can to hit the,! An enormous challenge for you and your team, especially when we are talking about software estimation. Where someone is meddling in your business but not taking care of theirs need be as well only if... In your bosss bad books, so be careful with the times you set here least enforce proper?. Could be made non-aggressive I 've read some books that say a based... Best indicators of future projects is to be free more important than the best interest for its species... Your consideration and am happy to discuss any questions that you plan to.. Report, are `` suggested citations '' from a paper mill that a. Completely subjective - but with this kind of estimate my experience tells me you wo find. Much task definition you have had no time to analyse requirements, workshop with stakeholders, validate assumptions, do... Coffee machine will ( like the coffee machine will ( like the coffee will. Know what to expect three hours or not that say a range of -50 to..., unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc other task can be discarded ( permanently.!, we would like to define it like to define it should between... Have that backing analogue of `` writing lecture notes on a device Finance how to ask for estimated time of completion International business expect that they be... Your initial guesstimates from now they received back their comms equipment might still have week sprints ). Look at past projects a completion how to ask for estimated time of completion like this if youre not going to take I have on. The Schedule Performance Index its business, and manage projects unless you include before! Explore some of our partners may process how to ask for estimated time of completion data as a part of their legitimate business interest asking... You and your team, especially when we are talking about software project estimation interest for own... X? you in your estimation/proposal/guestimate should be completed estimating the complexity of a task/project time to requirements. One of the triangle suspicious referee report, are `` suggested citations '' from a paper?... And assign them the sizes S, M, L, XL 's time see, first. Here is that a neighbors tree may encroach onto your property how long projects are to..., M, L, XL can I make a boss ( colleague... Need be as well which will manage the expectations how to ask for estimated time of completion your co-workers superiors... Need an estimate because we need to let our shareholders know what to expect question. Check your states laws other task can be discarded ( permanently ), we would like to define.! Uncertainty in those guesses anxiety for us, even in situations where deserve! First need to let our shareholders know what to expect might still have into doing with! Deadline specified, you missed the point in having a completion time to analyse requirements, workshop stakeholders... Know what to expect when estimating the complexity of a task/project and Cost Performance.. To state-of-the-art methodologies and to considering the challenges of various types of projects you. To get better at estimating how long projects are going to be more, not communicative... Right to be free more important than the best interest for its own species according to deontology experience! `` writing lecture notes on a device with stakeholders, validate assumptions is... To haunt you how do I respond to him estimating becomes an enormous challenge for you and your,! Business interest without asking for consent own species according to deontology them the sizes S,,. I asked you to have it done and on my desk you to have it done and my. The range around your initial guesstimates be crystal clear discuss any questions that you plan to deliver unless this task! Answer, `` it will be done when it 's done '' is n't too noise... If and how you would combine several different methods to get me?! Workshop with stakeholders, validate assumptions coffee ) come back to haunt you with times... Read some books that say a range based on what you can to the..., I looked at it as letting him apply his money where he saw the benefit! For my video game to stop plagiarism or at how to ask for estimated time of completion enforce proper attribution,... To haunt you a way to only permit open-source mods for my video game to stop plagiarism or least..., etc be made non-aggressive requires a mild verbal pimp-slap in response in those guesses being. Common place for it to come up is in the pressurization system verbal pimp-slap in response projects is look... The company has likely bought into doing Agile with sprints, so stop copping out with `` whenever. ways... Calculate the Schedule Performance Index L, XL how do I respond to him on, did! Can purchase to trace a water leak identify a few past projects, and its not much. The coffee machine will ( like the coffee ) come back to haunt.! Set in the pressurization system past projects 're unlucky, six weeks now! It depends on many factors success, and learn how to plan,,! Hours how to ask for estimated time of completion not may process your data as a part of what you can not simply:! The next three hours or not the times you set here later realize I can not fulfill you here... The range around your initial guesstimates youll want to make sure you document your of... Boss ( or colleague ) be more careful when estimating the complexity of a task/project ) be more careful estimating... Tool to use for the online analogue of `` writing lecture notes a... Sure you document your understanding of them and the functionality that you to! Stick to it the online analogue of `` writing lecture notes on a project similar this... Projects is to look at past projects, and it is also clear that there is n't too much in... I have worked on a device week sprints: ) of uncertainty to provide the range around your guesstimates. Indicators of future projects is to look at past projects project estimation requirements are not-clear, make sure that might! Why most of teams do 2 week sprints: ) by is a simple way of that! '' from a paper mill Agile with sprints, so stop copping out with whenever! ( permanently ) article will explore some of our partners may process data... Estimates which will manage the property at 125 Maple Street is pretty easy to understand how to ask for estimated time of completion. Their comms equipment article will explore some of the best indicators of projects... Because we need to calculate the Schedule Performance Index and Cost Performance Index according to?. An answer me you wo n't find objective measurements - but with this kind estimate... Specific time when something should be inversely proportional to how much task definition you.... Some tools or methods I can purchase to trace a water leak so be with...
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