Jordan's line about intimate parties in The Great Gatsby? You're likely better off giving some worst case scenario number and then get back to doing real work. Im really. They are often estimated between two different times, allowing there to be some wiggle room to determine when something might be officially completed. Don't tell them how may hours you've assigned per task, or how many hours you've assigned per week, they just need to know the day it won't happen before, and the day it should be done by. It does require some experience in your field and the task at hand. That is something that you should never say. The preferred words are ETA, duration, and time frame. These words or phrases are great ways of showing that something will be completed at a certain time. Everything else is purposefully unplanned so that you can be well agile about what gets priority. or clever way of say it is "Done when it is done" ? Master 101 frequent business situations with our eBook! How to respond when you are asked for an estimate? ), what delays you generally have due to higher priority work and then give him a date. Duress at instant speed in response to Counterspell. But when your back's against the wall and they refuse to give you better details, Fake It: It's like my mother used to threaten when I was a kid "Hurry up and pick out some clothes, or I'll pick them out for you!". The problem with giving a single number or a narrow range is that it paints you into a corner by setting expectations before any real analysis is done. Theres quite a long duration on this one, so you might want to take some time off. You sound like a self-motivated hard worker and possibly one who gives in easily to coercion. (Before or After? Or to specific risks? Specially when you feel the pressure How to find list of possible words from a letter matrix [Boggle Solver]. Bottom up is best. How to break the cycle of being a "load bearing employee" because of no time to cross-train others because of constant deadlines? Does Cast a Spell make you a spellcaster? Other than statistics approach, one simple way to have a good estimation of the current speed while erasing some noise or spikes is to take a weighted approach. Best guess is about two weeks." The requirements are unclear. The latter I rarely do but then just guess, add a bit, have the manager add a bit and make it into a range, with an little note next to it stating that the above is a guess. When they say it's too much, I pretend to think for a minute then say, "You're right! Imho, bad implementations of ETC are wildly overused, which allows us to have a good laugh. But it is your absolute obligation to let them know when things change and that you will be working on something ahead of their project. If you are not good at it, then get better by keeping records of what you estimated and what the actual time was. I'd estimate each piece in units of .1 hours (6 minutes). Theyre causing too much trouble on the back-end. Time estimation is just iterative estimation. End time is a confident phrase like completion time. Its a good way of showing that something will come to an end at a specific moment. Have you gathered enough information to find out the exact time frame? It sounds like you're being asked for a commitment, not an estimate. Sincerely, 123 Maple Street.. Do EMC test houses typically accept copper foil in EUT? If so, I would like to hire you, and I would like to put it in writing.. Dear (Recruiter), Thank you so much for the opportunity to interview with your company. For the last semester of your degree, you need to do an internship. That sounds like a very adequate technique. A text conversation can go stale in a few hours, he says. want to be sure that I get your data to you in plenty of time, https://today.uconn.edu/2019/06/please-thank-impact-online-politeness/, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233700639_Politeness_Myth_and_truth. This is the first decent answer here simply because it's the only one thusfar (I'm reading top to bottom) that stresses "ongoing communication". [1] Further, even . "Done when it's done" will simply convey the impression that you don't know and are not doing anything to find out. Do you think thats going to be enough time to get everything together? I find planning poker to be a great technique here. You think this is ridiculous, you think you can pull this off in one week. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. It gives the answer you want, it's fairly factual and neutral in tone, and it suggests that an estimate could be made at some point, but certainly not right now here at the coffee machine without a clear picture of what would it actually mean to do the thing he's asking about. The boss wants me to pass it to him, so he knows when to expect it all. Do you need extra help? Estimated time to complete is a value that is expressed in hours of work required to complete a task or project. If people were forced to assign priority numbers to the tasks, then it would start to become clearer: your #1 from 3 weeks ago has become #7, so is it really necessary at all? A model might be a mental model, diagrams, or existing data records. If you dont find out soon, you will have to research other places. when you don't know, How to respond to, "How long will this take?" It's easy to be accurate with an estimate that's too long, you just get more time to work on the problem and solve it better. can make people more receptive to your ideas. You can do better, if you are permitted more time with which to prepare your estimate, and are given more data upon which you can base your estimate. Really, you can tell that some people cant take the silence. ETA means estimated time of arrival. Arrival doesnt always have to refer to destinations or travel. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Its a very confident phrase, so you need to make sure that you can be certain that its achievable. You contacted a business where they might have an opportunity, but you have not heard back. What do you suggest when your direct manager is in the same position, and the stakeholder(the person inquiring about completion) and the manager are two unrelated people. On the other hand, if you're budgeting for six months for a project, but the project might actually take a year, would you rather find that out after six months, or after two or three? If the requirements are not-clear, make sure you document your understanding of them and the functionality that you plan to deliver. The new feature will probably break some assumptions you made in your code and you start thinking immediately of all the things you might have to refactor. If the deck gets built, you need to furnish it with outdoor furniture, get a barbeque, send out invitations and buy food. Your boss tells you that there is a project that needs to get done but has yet to give you the details. This is your responsibility to factor in unless you expect others to have the expertise about this area. Tasks are added to and (sometimes) removed from queue constantly. But it's then up to them to either escalate to Joe Y to get their task made priority, or put up and shut up. In some fields, tasks are clearly defined and handled in sequence: Building A House: takes X weeks, other tasks do not intervene. What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? If you have 6 projects lined up already, you simply refuse more. Its largely about your approach, as you can see, above. We're often asked for an "ballpark estimate" during meetings where we're given very broad and vauge ideas of what they'd like to do. Use the data to develop an estimate. Difference Explained (Helpful Examples), What Does Within 24 hours Mean? except he finishes on time in exactly 5 months. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. I disagree - you can say "the task itself will take X but other unestimable tasks may be randomly assigned by Joe Y which take priority". Get more granular and identify the substeps of each part. 10 hours a week? "That depends, how well does it need to work?" No matter how conscious you are of all these things, sometimes your Completed by is a simple way of showing that there is a specific time when something should be completed. Here are some possible circumstances you might be in: Sometimes of course you suddenly realize during some work that it's going to take much longer than you think. This is the best answer, imho. I like the empirical approach here. What are some tools or methods I can purchase to trace a water leak? Learn It Here! This is not an unnecessary interruption, this is part of your job. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. Make assumptions to fill in the gaps based on your best guess of what they want. I have implemented two different solutions to address this problem: The ETC for the current transfer at start time is based on a historic speed value. It's okay you think, you'll work over 100+ hours a week, unpaid overtime. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. How do you give your top choice a little nudge? We need it in writing ASAP. Three-point estimating. Manage Settings How do you get your contractor to respond with a deadline? These are different things, but if you can manage commitments reliably it'll really help your credibility and career. In situations where arrival doesnt relate to travel, it is always used metaphorically. Some advice based on my ~10 years of experience: First, if some task was assigned to me I would break it down into subtasks.I would estimate the time for each subtasks and probably with subtasks I would be able to find the problematic area and hence I would be able to forecast how long it would take to a certain extent. Why does Jesus turn to the Father to forgive in Luke 23:34? If the business case was solid they wouldn't need your estimates. I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. It means estimated time of arrival, where arrival is used metaphorically to relate to something that should be completed within a certain time frame. Include delay time and time for meetings, email communincation, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc. The people submitting the requests to your department should also have an understanding of how long it will take for you to do the work - the difference between the date of the request and the completion date should be no shorter than the minimum time to complete the task. . How to react to a students panic attack in an oral exam? Answering "how long will this take?" An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Is it ethical to cite a paper without fully understanding the math/methods, if the math is not relevant to why I am citing it? For example, is review included? Unless youre a part of the military yourself, youll often find that ETA is more popular. Try contacting the business, and see if you can speak with the person who makes the determination. Well put everyone on this task! Getting non-programmers to understand the development process. I haven't tried it myself, but I'd like to, to see how accurate my estimations are. Has Microsoft lowered its Windows 11 eligibility criteria? The most common place for it to come up is in the military. In todays office, its just a fact: People blow off deadlines. You can also send a task reminder, a calendar invite, or follow up with a second reminder. How can I make a boss (or colleague) be more careful when estimating the complexity of a task/project? I'm in software development, and the people at the top seem to think we are wizards(sometimes true). One does not estimate how many soldiers are needed to win a battle with no clue about the enemy numbers. If all else fails, try to research it yourself. But you can always estimate in any period of time - as long as the estimate isn't expected to be particularly accurate. What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? Check your schedule. A further essay noted that Politeness matters, however, we would like to define it. [2]. In which case, why can't you say? If I hit roadblocks so that after 3 hours I could tell that my 8.5-hour task was going to take 12, I could talk to him about it before more time passed so he could reevaluate and yank the feature if he was concerned about the cost. So in short, there are many bad ways to dodge the question. The completion time could do with fine-tuning. The trick is to be non-confrontational and ask very politely for the deadline to be given. . "That depends, what does it need to do?" Its not as common as ETA, so its probably best that you dont use it often. Improve estimated completion time via better algo/filter etc. Determine the scope of the problem. Often, in projects 'completion date' is used to denote the estimated (or actual, once complete) moment for the completion of a task. Is variance swap long volatility of volatility? Better: go speak to him personally to try to find out this information, using the same polite verbiage, above. With. I imagine it ultimately comes down to company culture, or the disposition of those who you are working with. Different things take different amount amounts of time, effort and resources to put together. The amount of information you give in your estimation/proposal/guestimate should be inversely proportional to how much task definition you have. Only when you start coding you can find the exact issues. At the end of the week you can add the time together for each priority, and once you've been doing that for a few weeks you should have a decent running average. When asked to estimate done dates, that's usually not what the asker wants to hear. The database administrators often require to how much longer perceive time for business intelligence workloads will take to . The new feature will probably break some assumptions you made in your I have several projects going so want to be sure that I get your data to you in plenty of time.. http://blog.lemberg.co.uk/project-management/software-estimation-process/. A simple way to get that is to have a factor that is a percentage of the completion, that you use to tweak the estimated remaining time. What matters is that you were 3 days off from a one week estimate. Estimate the number of hours needed to complete each task when they arrive into your queue. Once you have a solution, estimating is easier. They havent given me an exact time for it yet, but Ill keep trying! You can use duration to show that you have a good idea of when you might have something completed. What are examples of software that may be seriously affected by a time jump? Learners will be exposed to state-of-the-art methodologies and to considering the challenges of various types of projects. I will need your data by August 13th, by 1:00 p.m.. I've done something similar involving curve fitting. This is also helpful with any assumptions you make. Not likely. Whatever method you use it needs to be quick. So if your CEO is prone to retasking a member of your team, and knowing this, asks for an estimate, your suggesting is give a vague estimate, no matter what? Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. This way is easier to estimate and you only need to estimate the first stage. The 'done' definition is probably unclear: When will it be done? Estimated completion time of forEach() method. Clients will not accept whenever as a due date and so you should not give it to them. Is something's right to be free more important than the best interest for its own species according to deontology? As a freelance consultant, she also supports companies and executives in overcoming communication challenges. Katie is a passionate digital nomad working on her first book on the art of communication. rev2023.3.1.43269. If you are asking for something and you need it by a specific date, be crystal clear. What techniques have you found useful? Then someone could just look at the board and realize that their request will have to contend with N other requests. For example, the cubic function produces the nice speed-up toward the completion time. Because I have been on the job hunt, I believe I will soon have an offer. come up with an estimate that takes that other work into account. It depends on the organization and how the estimates are used. Err on the side of the looser estimate. Example: Suppose you have 10 previous windows (most recent x0, least recent x9), then you could compute the speed: When you have a good assessment of the likely speed, then you are close to get a good estimated time. Let them go fight out the priorities with the managers. Option 1: Assign both users and estimated hours to a task at the same time. "I'm not sure, it depends on Alice and Bob and" is a fairly passive-aggressive answer which can be used in some areas to deflect the person asking the question and if done well can turn that person into an asset who helps you remove roadblocks. Easily monitor estimated completion time with live tracking. Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow! You usually can't get away with being clever and saying "It will be done whenever it will be done" no matter how you frame it. The next idea I had was to keep a record of the progress for the last n seconds (or minutes, given that these archives are supposed to take hours), and just do something like: This is kind of the opposite of the first method in that: I'm reminded of the control engineering subjects I did at uni, where the objective is essentially to try to get a system that reacts quickly to sudden changes, but isn't unstable and crazy. The main thing to remember here is that you want a nice user experience, and not a scientific front. Firstly, I am aware that this is not at all a simple problem, and that predicting the future is difficult to do well. That's bad advice, and a poor approach to these things. being polite . Could very old employee stock options still be accessible and viable? In some situations, we need to know how to ask nicely. I cant see it taking any longer than that, so we shouldnt have to wait too long. Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, Time estimating of a complex bug investigation (not a straight-forward one). Nobody has done an in depth analysis of Is email scraping still a thing for spammers, Applications of super-mathematics to non-super mathematics. @SergioAcosta the point is you use the analysis/estimation time to break down the task into smaller chunks. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. And when payroll makes a mistake and under pays you, do you consider this an acceptable response when you ask when it will be corrected? Thankfully I knew I didn't have a proper grasp on the time requirement going in. When do you reckon this will be completed by? In that case it's perfectly OK to say "I'll have a better estimate for you in [some time].". ", This. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Would you please let us know by when you will address this issue? A limited answer for people using sprints (often software engineers). I'm not sure if you are advocating these actual responses, or a non-aggressive response that conveys the same information. Joe seems like a great worker, you seem unreliable now. And if he did want to invest the 8.5 hours, the detail work I did for the estimate was work I'd have had to do anyway. How long is acceptable to wait for a text? Generally, I start this sort of project at around $X. How do you give your top choice a little nudge? I was pulled onto another project.. From your responses to comments and answers, I suspect your question should really be: My job consists of many small tasks, which I can receive in any order, and which have varying priorities. If a law is new but its interpretation is vague, can the courts directly ask the drafters the intent and official interpretation of their law? Hover over the task, and click the Assigned column or the person icon that appears next to the taskbar. Understand the user-end requirement here, think like a user. This gives you extra room to work with to make sure that you will get a task completed within a certain time. If your projects are suffering because you didnt receive important data by a deadline, how do you handle it? To explain a bit more about the 'why' of that, in a software project there are often actions that can be done only when you are finished, but which have to be planned and scheduled in advance. When someone asks you for a completion date, add all the hours for their task and the tasks ahead of them at a given priority level together for the minimum and maximum times, and then divide by the average number of hours available to that priority level per week. This is pretty easy to understand, and it is also clear that there is lots of uncertainty in those guesses. They worked quickly & efficiently, even finishing before their estimated time of completion. Contact Michael to find out what time hes going to be able to upload this. Other words: Start date, end date. While Job #1 is the one you want, Job #2 might be good too, and you suspect you may have an offer, soon. @Darius.V, you make a good point. In a non-ideal world, things are likely planned to the Nth degree, and then broken into two week chunks, but the question provides a good opportunity for you to snidely comment about that absurdity. If you are dealing with an absentee owner or managed property situation, you may need to track down the property manager or owner and put your request in writing. How much does Joe work? I cant be dealing with estimates right now. In this way you can provide estimates which will manage the expectations of your co-workers and superiors. Dont just make them wait. If youre crushing on someone, dont play mind games, he says. The bulk of these projects won't go ahead so it is important that too much effort isn't expended providing the estimate. 542), How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Then provide a wide range. you didnt receive important data by a deadline, First, write the email or send the task reminder. Same as above, even for unanticipated work that's created by a slob team mate next to you with a near non-existent test procedure which causes your code to glitch out that you can't perfectly predict in advance. Passing the buck (i.e. I recall someone above my manager trying to assign a second "#1 priority" and my manager protested on my behalf: "They can't BOTH be #1!" Having tried to handle it amicably will have been documented if your neighbor suddenly objects. At least the second one can be rephrased to a less agressive form without compromising much on its content: This is probably the best answer so far, but here's my question for you. These people are paying your salary with their projects. But if you slip into the 180th or 210th day, not so much. I appreciate your consideration and am happy to discuss any questions that you might still have. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Often the person asking wants to know so that they can plan. Why does politeness matter, though, when we ask? If not, or in case of doubt, involve your boss. If at this point, you still get blown off, it does become personal, and it does become a productivity issue. How to properly visualize the change of variance of a bivariate Gaussian distribution cut sliced along a fixed variable? Include delay time and time for meetings, email communincation, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc. by accurate I mean that a stakeholder holds you accountable for. This causes anxiety for us, even in situations where we deserve an answer. @nobrandheroes That's probably worth another question. How did StorageTek STC 4305 use backing HDDs? As such, this stops your manager from planning out the bigger picture. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Provide interval instead of single time ('1h45-2h30 mins'), or just limit the precision ('about 2 hours'). @r.pankevicius Honestly, I just stopped giving estimates: I think it's also important to see the nuance between "estimates" and "deadlines". It is the PM's job to determine when these hours should be spent and figure out the proper date. Now you're three days late. What is ETA on completion? The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. Instead, you can convey your estimate, and give a degree of accuracy to your estimate. IMO, this is. Whats the ETC were looking at here? I try to work around it, try to really think about how long I think something will take, trying to identify all the potential trouble spots and bits that look too black-box-y for me to be accurately estimating. Its not wise to give a completion time to someone that you cant follow through with. A task that I thought would take two weeks ended up taking a month and a half. I would wait longer, but usually someone will crack before that. More interesting ideas here that I wouldn't have thought of. What are the underlying data structures used for Redis? For example: Where factor is such that factor([0..1]) = [0..1], factor(x) <= x and factor(1) = 1. Get a detailed work breakdown, estimate each component then roll it up into a larger number. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Is it ethical to cite a paper without fully understanding the math/methods, if the math is not relevant to why I am citing it? If you do many projects for the same boss or client, you can try to estimate in broad strokes of complexity instead of weeks or months, possibly in t-shirt sizes. "There are 3 tasks prior to that one, and it looks like best case is next Friday, and worst case is the following Wednesday. And our advise is: discussion of the project and providing ballpark figures should just be steps well towards receiving componential estimate (which is flexible, one can make use of componential type estimate for the whole development process. Small tasks or complete solutions. Sergio, "As a result, I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. ETC is another good acronym for this situation. Suspicious referee report, are "suggested citations" from a paper mill? The open-source game engine youve been waiting for: Godot (Ep. The initial idea that I had was to store the execution time taken for similar tasks that happened previously in the database, and probably do an average which acts as an estimated time needed. These approaches are a bit different, not something I would have thought of. I think the people managing the work have to add NO to the vocabulary. Can I use this tire + rim combination : CONTINENTAL GRAND PRIX 5000 (28mm) + GT540 (24mm). Track your estimates. If you're committing to work, then they need to commit to scope (and resources). originally suppose it might take. (The restaurant) requires a reservation. Saying "5 to 6 months" is different than saying "150 days". In this instance, arrival refers to the time that the document will complete the download (thus, arriving on your computer). You already experimented with the sliding window, the idea here is to take a fairly large sliding window, but instead of a plain average, giving more weight to more recent measures, since they are more indicative of the evolution (a bit like a derivative). If the deck doesnt get built, you have to plan a completely different type of party. Is there a reason you can't give at least a rough estimate? And you know, the situation is almost always like this: Many of these are organizational or cultural issues that are not simple and easy to solve, but in the end the reality is that you are being asked for an estimate and they expect you to give a reasonable answer.

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