Deadlines & Estimates: Part 1

Posted by mkhairul - July 10, 2008 at 11:07:54 pm - No Comments

Categories: blog

I’ve had my share of deadline horror. Burning the midnight oil and crap like that. For starters, I’m very optimistic, hence the 5 word that I usually said, "How hard can it be?", in many occasions have came back and stab me.

So, I’ve had it enough with my reckless optimism and this will serve as a note for myself or whoever is reading it.

Online Trial Exam Form System

I’d like to remind myself on the Trial Exam form project. The project started when I was suddenly summoned by my boss regarding the issue of students can’t apply for a trial test. The current system which is developed in ASP.NET and has some sort of flaw that I can’t remember (I’m trying to get the info from the system analyst but is unavailable, went off to some seminar). So, my boss’s voice seemed like it was needed badly, like RIGHT NOW, badly so asked me if can do it and set this as the HIGHEST priority.

I listened to the requirements of the form, quite simple actually @ "How hard can it be?" and nodded. After the requirements brief finished, I was asked when can the system be finished. Whoa! Since it was "urgent" I was eager to help! I told him I can finish it today. Big mistake.

Sure enough I finished it that day! My optimism is not just for show. Of course I can do it. So whats the problem? What "finish" usually means the application is ready to use AND have been deployed for use. Not sitting on my localhost doing nothing. Can that be done in 1 day? Of course not. Since I am not too familiar with the intricacies of big corporate hops and loops, I had no idea whats coming ahead. So I deploy it on the test server and the user processing part (sends email) doesn’t work. I tried using my own hosting’s smtp and it works. So, its our smtp’s problem. Opened up our request tracking system and sent an issue towards the Network & Server team. And thats it, I have to wait for their Head of Department to assign it to its subordinates. On with other stuffs.

The next day, I settled the issue with the Network & Server department (it was a relay problem, :\ ), and informed the System Analyst that its ready. Then I was told that I need to fill up some deployment form which is confusing as hell. I don’t know what to write in it. I bring the form to my boss and he too was confused. So we both went back to the System Analyst and discuss a little bit about the form. When that is out of the way, I wanted to deploy it, but the Online Trial Exam form thing must be embedded into the main website. So I went to see the Web Master, and asked the form to be embedded.

Well, I can’t just asked the Web Master to do it and it’ll be done. I have to go back to my cube and logged into the Issue Tracking and sent an issue regarding the embedding into the website thing and then an issue must be sent to the Network & Server team to request access to the server to upload the system into the live server.

The ordeal took 6 days..

My mistake was giving an estimate under 5-10 seconds. Actually, less than a day is a no-no.

Rule of Thumb!

Estimate in inch-pebbles, not milestones¹

Break it into pieces, if the pieces take more than 4 to 8 hours, they’re not small enough yet. Most people have trouble guessing their time to perform any job that will take longer than that.

After you have all the pieces and put it together, take your first estimate, double it, and add 50%².

Next I will post on a System Integration adventure.

References

1. Web Worker 101: Estimating Basics
2. 5 Rules of Thumb for Web Workers

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