This is a post about a trivial thing that I can estimate,\u00a0and there is a non-trivial point I want to make at the end.\u00a0 So you can just skip-to-the-end if that is the sort of person you are.<\/p>\n
I drive to work 5 days a week.\u00a0\u00a0 I need to get to my workplace, but I also want to pick up my daily oatmeal and drink for breakfast at a fast-food drive-thru.\u00a0 Simple stuff.<\/p>\n
I need an estimate so I can be sure to leave home early enough to get to work on time.<\/p>\n
I like to get to work 15 minutes early, and I’d like to make sure that I am never late except in exceptional cases.\u00a0 So if I can estimate a time that will get me there about 15 minutes early, but never later than 5 minutes early that would work for me.\u00a0 I don’t mind if I am 20 minutes early, but I don’t really want to be 25 minutes early.\u00a0 So, I’m looking for a time range that gets me to work between 7:40 and 7:55, with the ideal spot being 7:45.<\/p>\n
I want to be on time to work, with sufficient time to not worry about being late, and still not waste too much time just sitting there tweeting about estimates.<\/p>\n
I drive pretty much the same route every day with about 10 minor alternatives available. I can take advantage of\u00a0these alternatives (turn right here, or turn right a block up, stop at this fast-food or at that fast-food, etc) to make allowances for\u00a0congestion\u00a0at traffic lights, schools (school days are busy, holidays are not), drive-thru lines, and stuff like that – so I make a lot of little decisions on the way. For example: I’ll turn right at a light\u00a0if there are a lot of cars backed up and\u00a0take a chance that the next street isn’t backed up.\u00a0 That allows me adjust to get a better chance at a good drive time.<\/p>\n
Yesterday it took 40 minutes, the day before 43 minutes, the day before that 36 minutes (school holiday).\u00a0 Over the last year, I’ve found that it takes about 40 minutes to drive to work on a typical day.<\/p>\n
If I leave at 7:05, I will almost always get to work in my target time-frame.<\/p>\n
All well and good.\u00a0 And that works great for me for typical days.<\/p>\n
I “re-estimate” daily to\u00a0adjust for school holidays, weather, etc. and vary the time I leave for work to compensate.<\/p>\n
To clarify: I re-estimate every day to adjust for daily differences.\u00a0 I can “re-estimate” quickly.\u00a0 The cost is about 10 seconds of my time.<\/p>\n
On a school holiday, I can sleep in 5 minutes. If it is raining, I must leave 10 minutes early.\u00a0 If it is snowing, something is really wrong because it never snows here.<\/p>\n
You already know:<\/p>\n
That is, it is trivial.<\/p>\n
By the way –\u00a0 I can’t control the variables to\u00a0predict an exact time, so a range is sufficient.<\/p>\n
Having the estimate is useful as it helps me optimize my sleep time and still reach work on time.<\/p>\n
So, if it is useful to have an estimate, and we can make a meaningful estimate – then we have a good application of estimates.\u00a0 That is the case with my “drive to work” example.<\/p>\n
In my humble opinion, this is not similar to computer programming. We have the first part: We feel estimates would be useful, but we don’t have the second part – the estimates are not meaningful unless you are doing very trivial work.<\/p>\n
With software development we don’t have much data, we don’t know the variables, we don’t know the work-arounds, each project is very different, there are lots of unknowns, there is much to learn, and I can’t trust anyone for “good numbers”, not even ME.\u00a0 By the time we know enough about what we are doing to make useful estimates they are\u00a0useless because we are DONE.<\/p>\n
When we find our software development work\u00a0is “easy to estimate” it is likely that it is trivial in nature.\u00a0 That is, if it\u00a0matches the\u00a0nature of my “drive to work” example then\u00a0I would question if that work is actually software development. In software development, when I find I\u00a0am doing the same thing over and over, know all the variables, have few unknowns, have little to learn – then that’s the time I\u00a0investigate\u00a0ways to\u00a0automate it and stop “programming” it.<\/p>\n
And remember: This is ALL JUST MY OPINION.\u00a0 Don’t do anything I say.\u00a0 Don’t mention to anyone else that this makes sense to you, they will just say you are crazy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This is a post about a trivial thing that I can estimate,\u00a0and there is a non-trivial point I want to make at the end.\u00a0 So you can just skip-to-the-end if that is the sort of person you are. I can estimate how long it will take me to drive to work. I drive to work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boring-story","category-estimating","category-no-estimating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":496,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481\/revisions\/496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}