• OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    At my work, we have P1 and P2 tickets. Ideally you get them all done in a week, but you’re only supposed to have 3 days worth of P1 tickets, so it’s required to have all the P1s done.

    It worked really well for a few weeks. Then the PM started putting 4, 5, I even had one week where I had 9 days worth of P1 tickets assigned.

    I’m growing very tired of this company.

  • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
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    1 year ago

    I guess it makes somewhat intuitive sense. When I give an estimate, I’m probably more like to say “it’ll take 2 weeks. Maybe less, maybe more” and that maybe/maybe is 50%/50%, which suggests that the estimate is the median, not the mean.

    I like the thinking. I think looking at task uncertainty is much more useful than task size. Task size can easily be managed by breaking it up. Uncertainty can’t be managed in the same way.

    • jvisick@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      My favorite approach I’ve seen is just units of time -“this task will take a few [days/weeks/months/years]”.

      No specific number. Instead, the scale of the task is measured in one of those units and I can give you an estimate but it’s just a guess.

      If it’s task that might take “a few days”, it could be done tomorrow or it could take 5 days. If it’s one that takes “a few weeks”, it might be done next week or maybe next month.

      • atheken@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Breaking larger tasks down effectively removes uncertainty.

        My general rule of thumb in planning is that any task that is estimated for longer than 1 day should be broken up.

        Longer than one day communicates that the person doing the estimate knows it’s a large task, but not super clear about the details. It also puts a boundary around how long someone waits before trying to re-scope:

        A task that was expected to take one week, but ends up going 2x is a slide of a week, but a task that is estimated at one day but takes 3x before re-scope is a loss of 2 days.

        You can pick up one or two days, but probably not one or two weeks.

  • Wojwo@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    What happened to estimating the pessimistic, most likely and optimistic times and apply that to a beta distribution? That’s how I was taught back in the dark ages.