Project Estimation

snoofle

Several months ago, another team was tasked with adding support for a new kind of customer to our suite of applications. This yielded the following whiteboard of the expected work and design changes (documented in an email to the bill-payers):

    Old-Customer-1 ----\
    Old-Customer-2 -----+---> App Suite --> ...
    New-Customer-1 ----/

Now that it's way over budget, overdue and riddled with bugs, the bill-payers asked me to find out why a relatively simple graft-on took so long.

After much spelunking and ~~arguing~~ ~~yelling~~ ~~cursing~~ discussions with the developers, I came up with the actual workflow that had been implemented and responded to the bill-payers with the original email estimate, the image and the (perhaps overly simplified but politically correct) explanation: Underestimated complexity!

While I realize that you can only give so much detail to high-level bean counters, what you do give them should reflect the actual amount of effort involved.

Ibix

Mmm! Spaghetti!

Looks familiar, though.

RichP

Quoting protip for those reading along at home: if not one, but two, different colored dry-erase markers dry up while documenting the workflow, you've underquoted the job.

The whiteboard would make a great prop for a movie.

Verbal: So back when I was hunning rabbits with an intern from the Ace bandage company, we were up real early, like 6AM early, and he's already complaining about his girlfriend Lucene...

Detective: You know we're trying to help you...

GreyWolf1

They left out the most important bit...there should be a hexagon in the middle, with all arrows leading to and from it...containing the text "A miracle occurs"..

Hantas

@GreyWolf said:

They left out the most important bit...there should be a hexagon in the middle, with all arrows leading to and from it...containing the text "A miracle occurs"..

Isn't that what the cloud is for?

Lorne Kates

@GreyWolf said:

They left out the most important bit...there should be a hexagon in the middle, with all arrows leading to and from it...containing the text "A miracle occurs"..

I was thinkging an Octagon:

snoofle

@Lorne Kates said:

I was thinkging an Octagon:

...or a pentagram

blakeyrat

Dr. Z had a pretty good flowchart going. Zaat!

@snoofle said:

@Lorne Kates said:
I was thinkging an Octagon:
...or a pentagram

An inverted pentagram, to be exact.