[pif]

A few years ago, our management summoned some contractors to enlighten us on how to properly estimate a project. They taught us The Way (TM), and proudly stated that they were renowned for their respect of the deadline.

I wasn't snarky enough to remind them that shipping is extremely easy when you take no responsibility for maintenance, but I expressed my curiosity about how much time would be devoted to the preparation of the estimation itself.

I appreciated their honesty when they replied that, for a typical 1000-hour project, 250 would be devoted to the estimation.

I then strolled back to my boss and thanked him for letting me enter the Illuminati circle, and showed my impatience for showing him my progress with the next project. I promised him the best estimation he would ever get, and just warned him: "It usually takes us two years to develop a new machine. Next time, just let all of us (~100 people) disregard any other task and focus entirely on the estimation, and in six months top you will know whether the new machine is feasible."

He was not thrilled.

[rightbyte]

> I appreciated their honesty when they replied that, for a typical 1000-hour project, 250 would be devoted to the estimation.

I did not expect that plot twist to your story. Sounds about reasonable. Proper project management takes alot of time and need to engage the actual implementors.

[pif]

> Proper project management takes alot of time

Typical proper management is based on estimations given in front of the coffee machine.

Exceptional projects have the coffee machine substituted with a wine bar.

[6D794163636F756]

Never have I gotten more honest feedback from a manager than after a split bowl of punch and three espresso martinis

[steveBK123]

Exactly. And even then.. We had a consulting company come in and do an entire paid discovery & project planning phase. They came back with a proposal for phase 1, which they overran by 100%.

The entire project ended in acrimony since it was a statement of work, not time & materials, so at some point they are calculating how much of a loss the project is causing them to incur.

Change requests, threats of litigation, meticulous reading of specs to see what we could try to wring out of them let us with a product that never went to production.