Sure, time estimation hard for a feature, but at least it is possible to do!
I get asked quite a bit about estimating the length of a debugging session. Usually I'll reply something along the lines of "I can tell you when I know what is wrong" or "between 5 minutes and two weeks"
Others in our software department has started using that last one, when they get pressed during debugging, which has earned us a bit of a reputation among the PMs 😆
Haha I've also heard some devs say "How long is a piece of string?" when asked how long something is going to take. Debugging is such a tricky one, because like you said, it's so hard to estimate when you're not sure what the issue is (and if you were sure, you probably wouldn't be debugging!).
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I don't understand this "How long is a piece of string?" but reading it, it occured to me that if I don't have a map and I stand at one end of the road then in order to estimate how long it is, or how long it will take me to walk to the other end, I actually have to walk to the other end.
Yeah, "how long is a piece of string" is a pretty bizarre English saying in my opinion! There's a pretty interesting account on the etymology of the phrase here: english.stackexchange.com/question...
My team has to estimate work every sprint, which is expected of course, but when we're asked to estimate how long before a bug is fixed, I simply tell the asker that we won't know until we find the bug. They rarely insist on an estimate, but when they do, I will not budge... because it's obviously unreasonable to demand an estimate to solve an unknown problem. Luckily, the engineering leadership where I work are reasonable about this and back up the engineers when PMs make unreasonable requests.
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Sure, time estimation hard for a feature, but at least it is possible to do!
I get asked quite a bit about estimating the length of a debugging session. Usually I'll reply something along the lines of "I can tell you when I know what is wrong" or "between 5 minutes and two weeks"
Others in our software department has started using that last one, when they get pressed during debugging, which has earned us a bit of a reputation among the PMs 😆
Haha I've also heard some devs say "How long is a piece of string?" when asked how long something is going to take. Debugging is such a tricky one, because like you said, it's so hard to estimate when you're not sure what the issue is (and if you were sure, you probably wouldn't be debugging!).
I don't understand this "How long is a piece of string?" but reading it, it occured to me that if I don't have a map and I stand at one end of the road then in order to estimate how long it is, or how long it will take me to walk to the other end, I actually have to walk to the other end.
Yeah, "how long is a piece of string" is a pretty bizarre English saying in my opinion! There's a pretty interesting account on the etymology of the phrase here: english.stackexchange.com/question...
That's a good one too. I'll totally start using it 😆
I said "How long is a piece of string" at least 5 times today.
I also said "what you want to achieve is not feasible, go back to the drawing board" at least twice.
My team has to estimate work every sprint, which is expected of course, but when we're asked to estimate how long before a bug is fixed, I simply tell the asker that we won't know until we find the bug. They rarely insist on an estimate, but when they do, I will not budge... because it's obviously unreasonable to demand an estimate to solve an unknown problem. Luckily, the engineering leadership where I work are reasonable about this and back up the engineers when PMs make unreasonable requests.