Conversation

Notices

1. muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Dec-2021 04:41:28 UTC muesli

   "Software projects should only be estimated in days, weeks, months or years.

   Not a specific number of weeks, mind you. Just saying "It'll take weeks" or "It's months worth of work" is as good as it gets."

   -- Johan Oskarsson

   • muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Dec-2021 04:46:46 UTC muesli

     in reply to

     You can't deny there's some truth to this.

     It's a bit like asking an engineer how long it'll take to build this bridge, when you first have to invent the tools to build a bridge. And the nuts, bolts, screws and washers.

   • muesli (fribbledom@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Dec-2021 05:49:38 UTC muesli

     in reply to

     • GrooveStomp

     @groovestomp

     No analogy is perfect, but sticking with mine:

     The software components are just brick and mortar. You need them to build a house, sure, but designing and building a house is more than just dumping a bunch of bricks on a plot of land.

   • GrooveStomp (groovestomp@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Thursday, 23-Dec-2021 05:49:39 UTC GrooveStomp

     in reply to

     • muesli

     @fribbledom
     On the one hand, we mostly use off the shelf software and just glue it together.
     On the other hand, none of the off the shelf parts do exactly the right job and you don't know what parts they don't do until you try to glue them together.
     And business fixes contracts with partners without evaluating their technology first.

     But, you know, that'll be 7.4 complexity analysis points which roughly translates into 13 half days of work, but you have to factor in various meetings...

   • Aldroid (aldroid@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 23-Dec-2021 08:22:42 UTC Aldroid

     in reply to

     • muesli

     @fribbledom estimation is a dark art. Communicating _why_ it’s a dark art to a client so that they have the right expectations, that is a second dark art.