Comment by notjustanymike
3 hours ago
After owning a product, I've developed a lot of sympathy for the people outside of engineering who have to put up with us. Engineers love to push back on estimates, believing that "when it's done" is somehow acceptable for the rest of the business to function. In a functioning org, there are lot of professionals depending on correct estimation to do their job.
For us, an accurate delivery date on a 6 month project was mandatory. CX needed it so they could start onboarding high priority customers. Marketing needed it so they could plan advertising collateral and make promises at conventions. Product needed it to understand what the Q3 roadmap should contain. Sales needed it to close deals. I was fortunate to work in a business where I respected the heads of these departments, which believe it or not, should be the norm.
The challenge wasn't estimation - it's quite doable to break a large project down into a series of sprints (basically a sprint / waterfall hybrid). Delays usually came from unexpected sources, like reacting to a must have interruption or critical bugs. Those you cannot estimate for, but you can collaborate on a solution. Trim features, push date, bring in extra help, or crunch. Whatever the decision, making sure to work with the other departments as colaborators was always beneficial.
With respect, I think this approach is actually harmful to everyone in the org because you're trying to twist reality to fit a premise that is just impossible to make true: that estimates of how long it takes to build software are reliable.
The reluctance to accept the reality that it cannot be made true achieves nothing positive for anybody. Rather it results in energy being lost to heat that could otherwise be used for productive work.
This isn't about respect between functions, this isn't about what ought to be professionally acceptable in the hypothetical. It's about accepting and working downstream of a situation based in objective truth.
Believe me, I wish it were true that software estimates could be made reliable. Everyone does. It would make everything involved in making and selling software easier. But, unfortunately, it's not easy. That's why so few organisations succeed at it.
I don't present easy answers to the tensions that arise from working downstream of this reality. Yes, it's easier to make deals contingent on firm delivery dates when selling. Yes, it's easier to plan marketing to concrete launch dates. Yes, it's easier to plan ahead when you have reliable timeframes for how long things take.
But, again unfortunately that is simply not the reality we live in. It is not easy. Flexibility, forward planning and working to where the puck is going to be, and accepting redundancy, lost work, or whatever if it never arrives there is part of it.
That I think is what people in different functions are best served rallying and collaborating around. One team, who build, market and sell software with the understanding that reliable estimates are not possible. There simply is no other way.
I used to work in the semiconductor industry writing internal tools for the company. Hardware very rarely missed a deadline and software was run the same way.
Things rarely went to plan, but as soon as any blip occured, there'd be plans to trim scope, crunch more, or push the date with many months of notice.
Then I joined my first web SaaS startup and I think we didn't hit a single deadline in the entire time I worked there. Everyone thought that was fine and normal. Interestingly enough, I'm not convinced that's why we failed, but it was a huge culture shock.
> I used to work in the semiconductor industry writing internal tools for the company. Hardware very rarely missed a deadline and software was run the same way.
Former Test Engineer here. It was always fun when everyone else’s deadline slipped but ours stayed the same. Had to still ship on the same date even if I didn’t have silicon until much later than originally planned.
Yep, you and layout folks drew the short straws.
What was the thing you were estimating? R&D?
I think you were estimating time to build things that were out of R&D and you had specifications that were actual specifications you were building up to.
In SaaS my experience is: someone makes up an idea not having any clue how existing software is working or is laid out, has no specifications beside vague not organized bunch of sentences. Software development team basically starts R&D to find out specifications and what is possible - but is expected to deliver final product.
> Trim features, push date, bring in extra help, or crunch.
There are problems with all of these. The company knows they can sell X of the product for $Y (often X is a bad guess, but sometimes it has statistical range - I'll ignore this for space reasons but it is important!). X times Y equals gross profit. If the total costs to make the feature are too high the whole shouldn't be done.
If you trim features - the affects either the number you can sell, or the price you can sell for (sometimes both).
If you push the date that also affects things - some will buy from a competitor (if possible - and the later date makes it more likely the competitors releases with that feature).
Bring in extra help means the total costs goes up. And worse if you bring them in too late that will slow down the delivery.
Crunch is easiest - but that burns out your people and so is often a bad answer long term.
This is why COMPANIES NEED ACCURATE ESTIMATES. They are not optional to running a company. That they are impossible does not change the need. We pretend they are possible because you cannot run a company without - and mostly we get by. However they are a fundamental requirement.
If your business model needs the impossible then it's a bad business model. If your margins are too thin to absorb the schedule uncertainty then don't produce software.
Alternatively treat it like a bet and accept it may not pay off, just like any other business where uncertainty is the norm (movies, books, music).
I would settle for accurate estimates being a requirement if sticking to the estimate and allocations is as well. Every project I've been a part of that has run over on timeline or budget had somebody needling away at resources or scope in some way. If you need accuracy to be viable, then the organization cannot undermine the things that make it possible to stay on track.
> This is why COMPANIES NEED ACCURATE ESTIMATES. They are not optional to running a company.
Sure, but even accurate estimates are only accurate as long as the assumptions hold.
Market conditions change, emergency requests happen, people leave, vendor promises turn out to be less than accurate.
And most estimates for non-routine work involve some amount of risk (R&D risk, customer risk, etc.).
So pounding the table and insisting on ACCURATE ESTIMATES without a realistic backup plan isn’t good business, it’s just pushing the blame onto the SWE team when (not if) something goes south.
Companies need accurate estimates like I need accurate stock market forecasts.
They don't NEED them, but better project estimates can reduce the error bars on other dependent estimates (e.g. estimated sales, estimated ship dates, estimated staffing requirements, etc...), and that might be useful to a business (or not).
This is true, but the problem is that engineers are being asked to over-extrapolate given the evidence, and expected to own that extrapolation despite the paucity of evidence to make a good estimate.
I *HATE* estimating roadmaps, because it feels unfair. I'm happy to estimate a sprint.
Yes. I took over the project management of a job where the previous project manager had spent a year planning it out, but development had not yet started. The client was furious, understandably.
I abandoned the plans from the previous PM and discussed the job with the developer who ballpark estimated that the work would take 2 months. After a quick analysis I adjusted this to 14 weeks.
But the account manager thought this sounded too long and insisted that we plug everything in to a Gantt chart, define the shit out of everything, map the dependencies, etc, which showed that the development would only take 6 weeks.
The project ended up taking 14 weeks.
It's definitely unfair in a sense. But companies that make over-extrapolated roadmap estimates from not enough evidence systematically outcompete those who don't, because their customers greatly prefer companies who give a date and then try their best to hit it over companies who say they don't know when the product will be ready for X and you'll just have to wait and see.
You estimate your best and then during the project the people who keep changing the spec every two weeks ask why the deadline is slipping.
Yes, the key part of estimation is not that we need to say how large must be the (time) box to contain the project, but rather how much of a project can we pack into a box no larger than what the business could bear.
Hence the separation into must-haves, highly desirable, and nice-to-haves. Hence the need for modularity and extensibility: you if don't get to build everything in one go, and can't always even predict what parts would be left outside the scope, you have more of a lego-like structure.
BTW maybe if we finally shook off the polite lie of planning how much work a project could be, and instead started to think in terms of possible deliverables within different time frames, the conversation would become saner.
>>>> In a functioning org, there are lot of professionals depending on correct estimation to do their job.
A side effect is, no there aren't. Allow me to explain that catty remark.
The experienced pro's have figured out how to arrange their affairs so that delivery of software doesn't matter, i.e., is someone else's problem. The software either arrives or it doesn't.
For instance, my job is in technology development for "hardware" that depends on elaborate support software. I make sure that the hardware I'm working on has an API that I can code against to run the tests that I need. My department has gone all-in on vibe coding.
Customers aren't waiting because the mantra of all users is: "Never change anything," and they can demand continued support of the old software. New hardware with old software counts as "revenue" so the managers are happy.
I agree. Software engineering is basically the only industry that pretends this is professionally acceptable. Imagine if government staff asked when a bridge would be done or how much it would cost and the lead engineer just said "it's impossible to estimate accurately, so we wont. It's a big project tho".
Estimating in software is very hard, but that's not a good reason to give up on getting better at it
Government contractor's estimation is based on what number is politically acceptable, not how much the project would realistically take. 90% of public projects were overbudget [0].
But you're pretty spot on, as 'professionally acceptable' indeed means politically acceptable most of the time. Being honest and admitting one's limit is often unacceptable.
[0]: https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-do-large-proje...
Yes, my claim is absolutely not that they're good at it haha.
Estimation is a real problem in a lot of industries, including ours, and I think that's probably common ground here -- I suppose my differing position is that I think the solution is to get better at it, not to refuse to do it.
I've been on projects where I've seen the budget explode and projects where I've seen the budget kept tight and on track. The latter is very hard and requires effort from ALL sides to work, but it's almost always achievable.
I actually empathize a little bit more with megaprojects because generally the larger the budget the harder it will be to keep on track in my experience. Most estimates we're asked to give in our day jobs are not even multi-million dollar estimates.
Also I'm using budget and estimate interchangeably but these are of course different things -- that's one of my nitpicks is that we often treat these as the same thing when we talk about estimating being hard. A lot of individual estimates can be very wrong without affecting the ultimate budget.
Contractor estimates are just as prone to schedule slippage and cost overruns as anything estimated by software engineers. I doubt anyone's ever argued that giving wrong estimates is hard or impossible. Only that approximately correct ones are, and other industries seem to struggle with that just as much as software. Authors don't finish books by deadlines, so fans are left in the cold. Tunnels take twice as long and cost twice as much. Renovations take a year instead of 3 months and empty your bank account.
Saying "I don't know" is arguably more honest, even if it's not useful for budgets or planning.
> Contractor estimates are just as prone to schedule slippage and cost overruns as anything estimated by software engineers
I completely agree. That's why I chose that example: They're also awful at it, especially these days in North America in particular. But any contractor that tried to put in a bid claiming "it'll be done when it's done and cost what it costs" would not be considered professionally competent enough to award a multi-million dollar budget.
They miss estimates all the time though? It’s an observable fact
There is a bridge in my town that is finally nearing completion, hopefully, this year. It was estimated to be completed 2 years ago.
This changes when it’s a project that has fewer unknowns, where they’ve built the same thing several times before. The same is true in software.
Ever heard of Big Dig in Boston, for example? Or the Joint Strike Fighter?
Estimations in government contracts are as ridiculous as in software. They just pretend to be able to estimate when things will be done, when, in fact, the contractors are as clueless.
Not being able to say "it is impossible to estimate", does not mean your estimate will be correct. That estimation is usually a lie.
Not a good analogy. Once you build a bridge, it’s done. Software nowadays is never “done”, and requirements constantly change. It’s more akin to building a rope bridge and trying to upgrade it to accommodate cars while it’s in active use.
Sounds like you don't have a good process for handling scope changes. I should know, the place I'm at now it's lacklustre and it makes the job a lot harder.
Usually management backs off if they have a good understanding of the impact a change will make. I can only give a good estimate of impact if I have a solid grip on the current scope of work and deadlines. I've found management to be super reasonable when they actually understand the cost of a feature change.
When there's clear communication and management decides a change is important to the product then great, we have a clear timeline of scope drift and we can review if our team's ever pulled up on delays.
1 reply →
When customers ask when feature X will be ready, they sure have an idea of done in their mind.
When the government asks how much project X costs they find ten companies that promise the moon and then deliver a wheel of cheese for five times the estimated cost.
It all starts with sales and marketing cramming every possible feature and half-rumour they heard about competitors' features into a 6 month project deadline. That's a long time, 6 months, no? How hard can it be? Respectfully, it'll be done when it's done.
we are the ones qualified to say what needs to be cut to provide reasonable certainty for the deadline. it is not the job of non-technical stakeholders to mitigate risk in technical projects
You're saying it would be convenient for you to know the future. It would also be convenient for me. That said, if you haven't done very similar work in the past, it's very unlikely you'll know exactly how much time it will take.
In practice developers have to "handle" the people requesting hard deadlines. Introduce padding into the estimate to account for the unexpected. Be very specific about milestones to avoid expectation of the impossible. Communicate missed milestones proactively, and there will be missed milestones. You're given a date to feel safe. And sometimes you'll cause unnecessary crunch in order for a deadline you fought for to be met. Other times, you'll need to negotiate what to drop.
But an accurate breakdown of a project amounts to executing that project. Everything else is approximation and prone to error.