Having said that, the alternative of "estimating is a waste of time" is also ridiculous.

Having said that, the alternative of "estimating is a waste of time" is also ridiculous. "Developer, will I be able to catch the next train if I walk, or do I need to get a taxi?" "Estimating is a complete waste of time" "But I just want to know if I need to spend money on a taxi. It's two miles away and I don't have any bags, and the train leaves in one hour" "Start thinking post-industrially" "FFS, I just want to know how long it'll take me to get to the station!" So what's new here? That estimating an unknown task is silly? Well of course it is! But saying estimates are useless is also daft since there are plenty of times we know a fair amount about the problem, and knowing how long things are likely to take is very helpful in deciding what to do next. If someone asks me how long it'll take to add a bit more information onto a page that we already have in the database, I can give them a fairly good answer since it's a problem that we've done plenty of times and therefore have a good idea about how long it's likely to take. If they want me to find new data sources and integrate them then I can tell them we've never spent less than X weeks doing that so we have to assume it'll take at least that long. If X weeks doesn't seem like a worthwhile investment of time, then even this level of estimation has been useful.

Posted by IanCal on Feb 14, 2015, 12:46 PM

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