Sunday April 10, 2011

Why Estimating Development Time is Hard

We can’t estimate the time for any individual task in software development because the nature of the work is creating new knowledge.

Just found this great post on why it’s so hard to estimate dev time on a feature. Whether you work in a team or work is contracted to you, estimating is very hard. We’re tempted to overestimate so we look good, but that bites us in the end.

I’ve found this statement true from my own experience:

If we don’t know, we don’t know, and we need to say it. Clients who see regular progress on tasks they were made aware were risky (and chose to invest in) have much more trust in their team than clients whose teams make shit up. It’s true! Srsly.