May 26
In the process of getting from A to B, no matter how brilliant, insightful, or experienced you are:
- Netted out across all tasks, everything takes at least twice as long as anyone thought it would.
- You didn’t think of half the things you’re actually going to need to get done to get to the finish line.
- Whether you succeed or fail will depend in large part on how much breathing room you are able to give yourself to deal with this along the way, and your judgment how to best use that time as new situations evolve.
Moorgard said
May 26 2008 @ 8:07 pm
This is why Scotty always padded his estimates. There’s a reason they called him the miracle worker.
Nick McLaren said
May 26 2008 @ 10:05 pm
Ahh so true, and the endless push will always be there to make sure your team is “adequately stressed”, which effectively translates to “how much work can we get the team to pull off without pushing them to the point of total burn-out”.
In our case, with Scrum, we’re constantly looking at our story point velocity and how we can increase it. I’ve found that sometimes this can lead members of a sprint team to want to appease by grabbing that large story point item, but if they aren’t mindful about buffering their time at least a little, you could easily be looking at a sprint de-scoping session a few weeks down the road.. which also seems to come across as a negative from the eyes of the management team.
In the end.. even in an Agile environment, giving yourself extra breathing room is critical. I’d rather see people getting stories completed early and grabbing more, than over-committing and failing every sprint.
Good post!
Cheers,
Nick
Almeric said
May 27 2008 @ 11:27 am
I was always taught to give project estimates 1.5 to 2 times as long as I really expected it to take. Not to make myself look like a miracle worker, mind, but because of your second point above!
There’s always going to be plenty of things you forgot you might need, as well as time to correct errors (maybe by you, maybe not), to put out fires, to sit in 1 hour meetings that don’t conclude for 4 days, and so on
Managing projects is quite the rollercoaster!
Manas said
May 29 2008 @ 1:29 pm
Scott,
Congratz on the being ranked as one of the top twenty most influential people in the MMO WORLD!
Really awesome and based on everything I am seeing in the MMO world when compared to what you did with eq2, well deserved!
My compliments! Now get to work on something new….we need you.
Manas/John
Former Pantheon (circa 1999/2000)
The Hiram Key said
May 29 2008 @ 2:28 pm
As Moorard indicated, the Scotty principle is always the best method.
Cyanbane said
June 3 2008 @ 7:54 pm
Being a good manager just means just having the foresight to buy time in the planning stage rather than after it.
Swifty said
June 5 2008 @ 1:58 am
In an interview with Clint Eastwood , he said he looks at the time he needs for a scene, and thinks, well I can do that in 2 days, but I have the budget for 4 days. So he puts it in for 4 days, and gets it done in 3. This is why he has a rep for finishing early and under budget.
Babs said
June 8 2008 @ 9:35 pm
You’re so very right, Scott. Even the best project managers have horror stories as recent as their last project no matter how much buffer they’ve allowed. I agree with Cyanbane that buying time during the planning stages is critical to good management; many projects don’t get the planning they require. But even if you have the best estimates in place there’s always that ‘x’ factor that screams, “Ahaha! Gotcha!”
Illuminator said
June 25 2008 @ 10:15 am
I wonder if anyone has yet attempted to fit Toyota’s R&D process to game development.
The Hiram Key said
June 28 2008 @ 2:37 pm
I wish I could say to Scott… “How can I miss you if you won’t go away” but alas, I cannot.