Estimating

"How long" - Ace

If software development were to be described as an 'art' and not a 'science' then estimating would be 'the black art'. In fact, even if systems development is a science the estimating could still be described as 'the black art!'

How Do You Do It?

The best demonstration of how to estimate I have ever seen was where the Systems Development Manager put on one of those huge great foam hands with a pointing finger. He then pointed at one of his staff and yelled, 'Hey, you, how long will it take to do this, its up to you, and you better get it right because I'm gonna check up on you!' Now this may not seem very scientific but lets understand some of the principles behind it;

1. Have the estimating done by someone who knows the language, business area, system involved, etc.

2. Make it clear that those giving them will have to stand by the estimates they give.

3. Do not interfere with the estimate once given without the 'giver's' agreement.

4. Create metrics to track the effectiveness of estimates that have been given.

It can be surprising the thought and experience that can lay behind a seemingly simple statement. By the way, the individual with the foam hand produced very accurate estimates and could tell you by how much people were out and how accuracy varied with size.

Downsizing!

"Down, down, deeper and down" - Status Quo

There seems to be a little confusion over exactly what kind of 'sizing' we are dealing with since we have also had;

upsizing - we wanted to make it smaller but it just got bigger!

samesizing - seems OK to me! lets do nothing!

wrongsizing - who sold you this?

rightsizing - this looks wrong to me!

Let us have a definition of downsizing (or right, or same, or ..etc.) . It sometimes means;
'replacing one large thing with lots of small things'.

Koanic Words of Wisdom

I spent some time in a software development plant and was confused as to how it was run. It seemed to me that there were no set working hours at all with some people working all through the night, others going home after a few hours, nobody arrived at 9:00 and left at 5:00 or later (except me of course, I had not yet discovered many of life's truth's). So I asked the man who ran this place "what are the rules?"

He replied with a phrase that I will never forget, and which I believe sums up the right attitude of a software developer, he said "there is only one rule here, and that is you are not allowed to say that it cannot be done. You can say that you cannot do it. But remember, everything is possible".

This same site had a wine cellar for posh lunches with visitors. They had written a system to control the stock in the cellar and to help make selections. So you would type in the kind of food you were having and the number of people and the system would choose a selection of wines for you. The thing that amazed me was the quantities it was programmed to select, it appeared to select about one bottle per person - for lunch?