General > General Technical Chat
Why projects take longer than you think
<< < (4/14) > >>
coppice:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on April 16, 2019, 09:00:44 pm ---Q: - Why projects take longer than you think?
A: - 'Cause you're stupid!
;D

--- End quote ---
Q: - Why projects take longer than you think?
A: - 'Cause its too depressing to face how long most engineering tasks really take.

In my first job people used to keep calling my estimates pessimistic, even though things tended to take longer than I estimated. Apparantly the threshold for not being a pessimist is that things should take as least twice as long as you estimate.  :)
Tomorokoshi:
Who is asking the questions about the project? What kinds of questions do they ask?

Usually those asking the questions are a collection of horizontal and vertical layers of management relative to the various engineering groups.

The questions they are asking are usually:
How long is it going to take?
When is it going to be done?
How long would it take to add this feature?

usually followed by:
Shouldn't that take just a couple days?

What questions are not being asked? How about:
Do we have a clear idea of what the product should be?
What can I do (as a manager) to clear the way? ("move furniture", as Joel Spolsky says)
Do I (at a management level) understand the existing product, the current technology, the new product, the market, etc.?

The illustration above about using a personal credit card to expedite a Digi-Key order hit way too close to home, and it seems relatively common. To put some numbers on it, let's say an engineer with a burdened cost of $100,000 per year works on a project with an expected budget of $1,000,000. An order of $100 is necessary to move a key part of the design forward.

So suppose it's Wednesday the 1st at 5:30 PM and to expedite an issue you want to make a Next Day Digi-Key order for delivery on Thursday the 2nd. The boss left at 5:00 PM, and he as the one credit card for the group. So it's entered by 6:00 PM but it won't get processed anyway until the next day because Purchasing leaves at 4:00 PM. But then it doesn't get processed because the purchaser took Friday the 3rd off, so now it doesn't get ordered until Monday the 6th, but they did 3-day delivery instead of next day, making it arrive on Friday the 10th.

Did this save any money anywhere in the process? What is the value of expediting blocking processes like that? Would a $1000 credit card per engineer be worth while? The liability on a $1000 credit card is... $1000. With an engineer who is answerable to what is purchased, so ordering cookies or golf balls probably won't happen. What is the liability of a week of delay? $10,000?

Look at all the relative orders of magnitude here. The little tasks get in the way large responsibilities, like priority inversion in some embedded system.
RoGeorge:

--- Quote from: NivagSwerdna on April 16, 2019, 09:08:06 pm ---Agile development is trendy...

--- End quote ---

Agile SW development.
Well, not trying to offend, but as a hardware developer I can testify I have never seen so much trendy bullshit in my entire life!
Tomorokoshi:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on April 16, 2019, 09:14:09 pm ---
--- Quote from: NivagSwerdna on April 16, 2019, 09:08:06 pm ---Agile development is trendy...

--- End quote ---

Agile SW development.
Well, not trying to offend, but as a hardware developer I can testify I have never seen so much trendy bullshit in my entire life!

--- End quote ---

I can see Agile being useful for something that requires a quick succession of updates, such as a web site.

I know of a hardware project that the Agile development process is being used on. I'm worried they will end up perfectly designing the wrong thing.
ataradov:
Agile works if you do it right. But it does mostly nothing to speed up the development. It is not meant to do that. Any speed ups are purely coincidental.

Agile reduces stress in the team and adds flow to the process. And for that it works perfectly. I was on a team that used it it was one the best times in my employment.

It will probably not work for hardware, I'm not sure.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod