The art of project estimation
Description
A four-panel comic from 'Work Chronicles' featuring two minimalist stick-figure characters. In the first panel, one character asks, 'SO WHAT'S THE E.T.A FOR THIS PROJECT THAT I JUST DESCRIBED TO YOU?'. They are looking at a blue diagram showing a simple tree structure. In the second panel, the other character replies, '1 WEEK.' In the third panel, the first character counters with, 'LET'S TARGET 0.5 WEEKS.' In the final panel, the second character clarifies with a clever twist, 'ACTUALLY, I MEANT I'LL SHARE THE E.T.A AFTER 1 WEEK.' This comic perfectly captures the common struggle between developers and management regarding project timelines. It highlights the absurdity of stakeholders negotiating estimates for complex technical work they don't fully understand, and the developer's witty comeback reveals the truth: proper estimation itself is a significant task that requires time and analysis
Comments
10Comment deleted
The fastest way to get a developer to give you an estimate is to suggest an impossible deadline. The estimate will be 'no,' but at least it will be quick
Gave the PM a one-week timeline; he replied, “Cut it in half.” So I opened a ticket titled “Estimate the estimate” (1 week). Congrats team, we’ve implemented Agile Zeno’s paradox: we keep halving the distance to done, but delivery never actually moves
The only accurate project estimate I've ever given was when I said "it depends" and the PM thought I was joking
The engineer's classic three-stage estimation process: (1) Give honest estimate, (2) Watch it get halved by management, (3) Realize you should have just said 'I'll get back to you on that' from the start. It's the distributed systems equivalent of eventual consistency - everyone knows the initial estimate is just the first value in a convergence algorithm that'll take at least one full sprint to stabilize
In our org, uncertainty is a lossy codec - “ETA after 1 week” gets decoded by product as “ship in 0.5,” and the confidence interval rounds to zero
At this point in the cone of uncertainty, the only thing I can deliver in one week is a Monte Carlo of the ETA - negotiating it to 0.5 doesn’t move the critical path
Devs' true ETA superpower: estimating the time needed to estimate - because even velocity needs a sprint zero
Ахахаха, пару недель назад просили дать эстимейт на клон части функционала twilio. "Как 2 недели?", ахахаха Comment deleted
две недели, если прямо сегодня отдать заявление в кадры Comment deleted
А чем эстимейт от сметы отличается? Comment deleted