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When I was doing more project work I outright refused to give estimates, explaining that I could come up with a random figure that's so low they won't believe it or so high they won't like it, and in any case the figure would have nothing to do with when the project would be complete.

Instead I offered broad time ranges that would narrow down to more accurate ones as work progressed. The managers who had to report those upwards didn't always like that first but they grew to appreciate how the dynamic worked across the project timeline. In the beginning, they didn't know how long because nobody knew how long. Well, maybe definitely more than a month and definitely no longer than a year, and "it all depends". But every week we knew more and they knew more, and the time margins could be shrunk incrementally as soon as difficult tasks turned out to be not so difficult. So the more progress the better everyone knew how we were doing.

That is one gratifying slide to completion but I do admit it probably doesn't work for every team or company.




"instead I offered broad time ranges that would narrow down to more accurate ones as work progressed"

Well, that is an estimate according to managers who actually understand what they're doing ;-)


This falls into my line of thinking, I tend to be liberal on my project estimates as well.

Unfortunately some project managers / product GMs, and sometimes worse, technical salespeople, fail to understand what all is involved in building the software, web functionality they've come to expect to "just work".

That being said, I've been surprised at how understanding people can be when you explain to them in thought out manner.


>>When I was doing more project work I outright refused to give estimates... Instead I offered broad time ranges that would narrow down to more accurate ones as work progressed.

Broad time ranges can also be risky, because people will hear what they want to hear, which is usually the lower end of the range.

Which is why I only discuss effort (in hours) rather than timeframes. All of our projects are fixed bid, so the conversation usually goes, "this project will take 150 hours of effort. We don't know how long those 150 hours will take to expend." And in rare cases where we absolutely have to mention a timeframe, we make sure it is not in writing anywhere.




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