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Comment by anthonyoconnor | Hacker News Reader

I’ve gotten plenty of requests like this:

‘we just need a rough estimate, we won’t hold you to it’.

‘Ok based on the 2 minute conversation we just had I think about 3 months’

‘What! That seems way too long’

Other times I’ve been asked for estimates on features even though there is a hard deadline due to some external factor. I really fail to see the point of estimating anything when there is already a decided upon end date. Anyway I usually point out that they will need to just put the features in order of importance and I’ll work down the list. And they should start thinking about what can be cut. This usually leads to protests of ‘we have already cut everything we can’. But I have to laugh as we get closer to the deadline that suddenly not every feature is as important as was originally thought and magically get cut.

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I always talk them into making an ordering, and it's not difficult. If my managers fail they escalate to it to me. It usually goes something like this:

   Me: You need to prioritize the items.
   PO: I cannot, they're all important.
   Me: If you do not, we will make them by the order we want, 
       possibly coin flip, but probably in order from easiest to hardest.
   PO: Fair enough, you get them all done anyway.
   Me: That is not a given and you know that, but I will send you an 
       email for confirmation that any of them can be dropped to
       meet the deadline, okay?
   PO: Hold on, can I at least pick a subset that you know will be done?
   Me: Sure, and don't stop until you have roughly 3 equally sized, 
       by estimate, categories: Must-have, Ought-to-have, Nice-to-have.

By the time we're heading into the "Ought-to-have" I tell them to do it again. I fear that I some day might be in a position where I do not have the weight to do this, but as it stands right now, not a single developer produce a line of code if someone waltzes in and tries to decide both scope and deadline.

You know, I've seen a number of Uncle Bob talks where he emphasizes professionalism and every time he does I envision interactions like you've described. But every time I hear this I think to myself, well he's in a unique position because of his brand and companies seek him out for is skill set; he has the luxury of being professional.

You've added the qualifier he never seems to add, that someday you might not be in the position to act professional. This is a sad but accurate commentary on the current state of things in our "profession".

I guess also some people find out by trying. It's scary when you don't know if the response will be "fine, ok then" or "hm, well talk about this later", and you find yourself demoted or encouraged to leave (Europe) or fired (more a US thing I guess).

If you're punished for professionalism, you know it's time to find a different place to work. If you don't it's a one way ticket to stress and depression.

Then when the deadline does whoosh by - nothing changes and the sun rises just as always. It turns out very many deadlines are not in fact hard, they were just thrown on the table in some meeting and everybody starts to act like it is the end of the world if that date is passed.

Very true. Plenty of projects I've worked on have had immovable dates that suddenly become movable once you get close enough to them.

On the flipside though I do think a deadline is necessary for everybody involved, developers and managers alike. It really helps to limit feature creep. And it forces people to think about what they really want or need.

My last conversation like this:

Manager: ‘we just need a rough estimate, we won’t hold you to it’.

Me: ‘Ok based on the 2 minute conversation we just had I think about 3 months’

Manager: ‘Ok, I guess then we need to outsource it.’

Me: ‘Ok, then I need 3 months for guiding them through it, and 3 months for fixing their bugs.’

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