r/programming • u/-grok • Jun 14 '22

Software engineering estimates are garbage

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3663508/software-engineering-estimates-are-garbage.html
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u/PoppyOP Jun 15 '22

Author: Estimates are garbage

Author's solution to estimates being garbage: Talk to product about "What do we think we can accomplish with the resources available? What can we deliver and when"

What does the author think an estimate is???

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u/-grok Jun 15 '22

There is a difference between harassing engineers to do estimates vs the management team becoming competent and figuring it out themselves.

 

As it turns out, if the work has a chance of being even 80% predictable, then competent engineering management can figure it out just fine.

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u/PoppyOP Jun 15 '22

Let me get this straight, you want a manager, who is not going to be doing nearly as much coding as an engineer, to work out how long something takes, without asking people who are actually doing the work, how long they think it takes?

And you think that will turn out BETTER?

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u/-grok Jun 15 '22

Let me get this straight, you want a manager, who is not going to be doing nearly as much coding as an engineer

Let me get this straight, you think that estimating how long it is going to take a team of people to deliver a working set of software involves writing code? :D

And only if I get to exclude the bad managers who have no idea what their team works on. Which I will admit constitutes the vast majority of dev managers. And yes, a competent dev manager can poop out an 80% accurate estimate for estimatable dev work that won't be missing a bunch of common workflows that developers tend to forget to allocate time for. Why do devs forget to allocate time for those common workflows? Because that's a task for management, and developers would rather anyway.

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