An_Estimate_for_an_Estimate
| Hometown: | Melbourne, Australia |
| Specializations: | Java, Ruby on Rails |
| University: | Software Engineering & Economics, Melbourne University |
| High School: | VCE, Melbourne High School |
| Links: |
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Once again another bit of blogging inspiration from my Project Manager 
Its becoming rather a bad habit, but I find that my current PM (and project) seem to inspire me to blog
Moving on....
My current project has hit a few bumps recently and so some members of the team have been asked by management to stop and take stock of where we are at. My personal belief is that any project can be delivered with adequate developers and testers with enough determination working side by side.
But I digress.
Anyway, management insists that as part of this "exercise" some members of the team need to stop and estimate the amount of time required to deliver what remains of the project. Problem is that the complexity of the work remaining means that those team members are not able to give that estimate without further analysis.... So my PM came up with this gem yesterday morning at standup:
"I need you to estimate the time required to give me an estimate of the work remaining"
What amazed me more than the quote itself was that she said it with a straight face and nobody else laughed. Can anyone else see the start of an endless loop? Perhaps an estimate is then required to give an estimate of an estimate!!!
Anyway, i was having a bit of a chuckle with one of the BAs here and he justified it with this line:
"It may sound odd, but we don't know how long some tasks will take to do, so we have to estimate how long we need to come up with that timing, hence the estimate for an estimate."
hahahahaha.... you know when people put "LOL" but they aren't actually laughing out loud? Well, this time round I actually did laugh out loud!!!
Comments ...
i've never heard the word 'guesstimate' until that PM coined the word to me..
any BA's assigned.
I could make a guesstimate of the impact that had, if you like.
true(BA!=TA); then true(TA!=BA)....... *#&$*(&#*($&(*#Q&$
if (TA!=BA) then whatDoesTADo();
whatDoesTADo(){
throw new JingleBellsException("mooooo"
}
octal.......
but it cant be octal.... since some numbers are outside the boundary..... so
that leaves hexadecimal and decimal...
It needs to be more specific....
lets try decimal...