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Discussion on: ⏰ How to nail time estimations

 
jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy 🎖️ • Edited

You can do it at any workplace. Stand up for yourself. If you produce good work you'll be valued. Don't waste time on activities that are detrimental to the production of a good final result.

Deadlines and being held to estimates almost always results in inferior code which ultimately makes the project take longer as there are more issues and technical debt to address - not to mention the time spent estimating!

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carmenintech profile image
Carmen Chung

I agree spending time estimating can be annoying, and that badly-estimated deadlines are very often dangerous, and detrimental to code quality.

I think we'll need to agree to disagree on not doing estimates at all though. I think being a good team player means keeping the rest of the company informed of when they can expect a feature to launch. In my experience, partnerships needs to prepare workshops for partners (and customers, in my current situation), communications/marketing needs to get media releases ready, and management needs to inform investors/the Board about how their money is being spent. It's unfair on them to suddenly spring a feature launch and expect them to scramble to get their work done, especially if there's time-sensitivity to what they do (i.e. they need to get their media releases/workshops done within a week of the feature being launched).

But again, that's just my experience - if you don't have people relying on your time estimates, then by all means, estimates are pretty pointless!

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190245 profile image
Dave

Why the hell can I only click "love" once on your posts? You deserve a lot more than that!

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carmenintech profile image
Carmen Chung

Thanks so much Dave, really appreciate it! Also love your "go back to the drawing board" comment - it's super important for people (not just devs) to raise when things aren't possible early on, and to encourage re-thinking the solution (and sometimes the problem, haha).