{"id":1680,"date":"2013-08-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-08-01T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wwwneu.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2013\/08\/02\/1631\/"},"modified":"2013-08-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T22:00:00","slug":"1631","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/weblog\/archives\/2013\/08\/02\/1631\/","title":{"rendered":"Underestimate, fantasize, and lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

A week ago, I wrote on Twitter<\/a>: \u201cA bit harsh, but: CxOs tend to fantasize, salespeople to lie, developers to underestimate<\/strong>. Poor project managers (and customers).\u201d<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t intended as a rant: These are common pitfalls which contribute to software projects not being finished on time (or not at all).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a well-known fact that software developers<\/strong> are bad at estimating how much time they need to implement some functionality. There\u2019s an abundance of articles written about estimation (examples: Liz Keogh<\/a>, Joey Shipley<\/a>, Anders Abel<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Salespeople<\/strong> have a difficult job; sometimes they\u2019ve got to sell something that doesn\u2019t actually exist but they think can be delivered. And many requested features leave room for interpretation \u2013 they get into the habit of saying yes. It\u2019s tempting to remain vague or bend the truth a little just to close the deal.<\/p>\n

The CxO<\/strong>\u2019s job is strategic long-term thinking. The potential trap is to become detached from day-to-day business operation. Then she might confuse yesterday\u2019s strategic plans with what little of them development actually managed to implement until today.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s traps for everyone to fall into (including project managers and customers). Just because the problems and failures of developers are more widely and openly discussed doesn\u2019t mean others have less responsibility for a successful project. (My theory: As engineers, developers are more likely to look for problems, honestly analyze them and publish their solutions.) If we want to do dramatically better, we need to improve on everyone\u2019s role!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week ago, I wrote on Twitter: \u201cA bit harsh, but: CxOs tend to fantasize, salespeople to lie, developers to underestimate. Poor project managers (and customers).\u201d This wasn\u2019t intended as a rant: These are common pitfalls which contribute to software projects not being finished on time (or not at all). It\u2019s a well-known fact that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weblog"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.strehle.de\/tim\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}