how to ask for estimated time of completion30 Mar how to ask for estimated time of completion
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. In 1 hour of detailed estimating, I'd determine it'd take 8.5 hours. We, as programmers, are constantly being asked 'How long will it take'? By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. +Not technically the least helpful response. OK, maybe more diplomatically than that. Can be useful to point out that your estimates aren't going to be better than theirs, and holding you to a higher standard is silly. No, I looked at it as letting him apply his money where he saw the most benefit. There are occasions in life both business and social when you need a deadline. Here is a phrase you can use: "Dear (Recruiter), Thank you so much for the opportunity to interview with your company. A PM will hear this as your answer to when will it be done: "### #### # #### ## 3 months ### #### ## #####". This is the best answer, imho. Track your estimates. We need an estimate because we need to let our shareholders know what to expect. 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). 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. But if you slip into the 180th or 210th day, not so much. And realize that your clients asking for estimates will be totally inaccurate here about how they word things and understand the technical aspects of what you say. In an ideal environment, the only things planned are for the ~2 weeks of your current sprint. You sound like a self-motivated hard worker and possibly one who gives in easily to coercion. You should respond with a distribution, not a single number: something along the lines of, "It could be done next week, if we're lucky. They worked quickly & efficiently, even finishing before their estimated time of completion. Ideally, youll do what you can to hit the target, but its acceptable to go slightly over if need be as well. Meanwhile, Joe estimates 5 months. What is your personal process for deciding and delivering an estimate? Add 25-50% to your estimate so you have a higher chance of accurately estimating the time you need. What are good methods given the start time and the current progress? Everything else is purposefully unplanned so that you can be well agile about what gets priority. We need it in writing ASAP. Indicate when progress has stalled - although if progress consistently stalls and then continues, we should be able to deal with that. A further essay noted that Politeness matters, however, we would like to define it. [2]. Instead of showing a single ETC, show a range of time. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Another good strategy that worked for me is to split a project into stages. Based on comments on other answers, it appears that your problem is not time estimating but communicating delays based on changing priorities. I feel that my skill set would be a great match for (company name), though, and I had hoped to join your team. It must have gone into my spam. Or: Oh, sorry. Make them sit down, read, and agree to your assumptions (or, if you're lucky, get them to give in and give you real requirements). I sent him my estimate for each task along with that detailed breakdown. By the way, all of the above responses assume you are 'senior level' worker responsible for their own scheduling. 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. When you are asked to estimate due dates, is there a especially polite I will be booking it when they open tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. - adam. The estimate is made after scouting. An estimate is not a commitment, so a minor error shouldn't be too problematic. In 2007 Congress added a provision into the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that requires agencies to provide a requester with an estimated date by which the agency expects to complete work on a request, when the requester asks for one. If there are tasks that need to be done that never get done, you can consider implementing an time-based priority level increase. Estimated time to complete is a value that is expressed in hours of work required to complete a task or project. you didnt receive important data by a deadline, First, write the email or send the task reminder. 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? The project will be delivered within the next twenty-four hours. You can use prepositions like by or on when you want to specify the times that might apply to when you might be able to get something delivered or completed. That is something that you should never say. That response often will get a bad reaction. Consult historical data. doesn't always mean "Hurry up." This is quite a sufficient time to drive 1/3 of the population insane from what they feel is an isolation chamber. 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? If we're unlucky, six weeks from now. Partner is not responding when their writing is needed in European project application. It depends on the organization and how the estimates are used. Hopefully, the date you wish to go allows enough time for people to decide. Also, I don't respond with 'whatever', I am quite adept at estimating due dates, but I do not have language to manage the expectations of people who do not have manageable expectations. This should not wait until they have to ask you why it isn't done yet. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. Being on good terms with your neighbors is important, but sometimes it can be difficult. Software estimation is the most difficult single task in software engineering- a close second being requirements elicitation. 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. Those are important, in case you need future documentation that an employee is not doing their job properly. Would I be able to get an answer by next Tuesday?, Asking for deadlines shouldnt be painful. State your assumptions. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. I dont mind an estimate, but I dont like the three-hour disparity between your numbers. If nothing else, make sure you document your attempts to find out when things are needed. But "it'll be done when it is done" is only one step up from those. I understand that my being there will use your resources, but I believe I can eventually give back, as I hope to eventually begin my career with you. Or is there none? I like the empirical approach here. IMO, this is. Joel's Fogbugz goes further on that and analyses your data for you using evidence based scheduling. They may also be worried about hurting your feelings or coming off as being confrontational. Make it broad. These people are paying your salary with their projects. If not, then he saved 7.5 hours over what it would've cost him if I'd done it without an estimate. You have to estimate the time of completion considering the best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and . "Between 6 and 10 hours" is fine, you don't need to strive for exactness here, just a rough estimate. A recent study from the University of Connecticut found that . I'm stressed by having software deadlines imposed on me without my involvement. By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. The 'done' definition is probably unclear: When will it be done? Or perhaps: No, unless this other task can be discarded (permanently). is a more plainly aggressive response where someone is meddling in your business but not taking care of theirs. Today through 4pm Sunday: Take $5K off the list price, Only $1,000 Earnest Money (Primary Residence. Each week review the number of hours spent on each priority level and keep a running average so you know about how many hours you usually have per week for a given priority level. A bit late but when I was in the military we were instructed to use PERT to determine estimates. 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. ), 9 Other Ways to Say Im Good At on a Resume, 10 Polite Ways to Say No Visitors after Surgery, 11 Best Ways to Say Im Here for You to a Loved One, 10 Professional Ways to Say I Am Not Feeling Well. Use tools such as Business Requirements Analysis, Work Breakdown Structures, Gap Analysis, and Drill-Down to do this in sufficient detail. Instead, you can convey your estimate, and give a degree of accuracy to your estimate. Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Guess who gets perceived as the jackass? Can you find one of the IT guys to let me know what else we might be waiting on here? 10 hours a week? If you are asking for something and you need it by a specific date, be crystal clear. Would you please let us know by when you will address this issue? Firstly, I am aware that this is not at all a simple problem, and that predicting the future is difficult to do well. Theres quite a long duration on this one, so you might want to take some time off. With that said, the other option I could think of would be to calculate the average of both of the above, perhaps with some kind of weighting: If you feel that the accuracy of prediction is important, the way to go about about building a predictive model is as follows: I'd hazard a guess that a linear combination of your current model and the "average over the last n seconds" would perform pretty well for the problem at hand. But, since the Requirements aren't written yet, I will be able to provide a more precise estimate once I read them." How detailed is the estimate you show your customers? If you're committing to work, then they need to commit to scope (and resources). Post Sennings general rule is to not wait longer than one to three hours to reply, he tells TI. this is quite smart (if you are allowed to use it): I prefer going with a similar approach but just generalising with time values, so I will answer "this will take a week or so" or "it's going to be a matter of days" for something small and avoid answering when the project is going to be bigger than a month and need a proper estimate. How to extract the coefficients from a long exponential expression? Manage Settings During the transfer I compute a weighted average between the historic data and data from the current transfer, so that the closer to the end you are the more weight is given to actual data from the transfer. If you go over the deadline specified, you missed the point of by. Naturally, this could put you in your bosss bad books, so be careful with the times you set here! How much do you feel improved today? . You need a baseline. Answering "how long will this take?" In general, honesty is best, be upfront about it, and keep him in the loop. How Do You Ask For Contact Details In An Email? 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. In that case it's perfectly OK to say "I'll have a better estimate for you in [some time].". in your estimate to get a better number. Once we had decided to share our experience and our knowledge about software estimation process and defined four distinct types of estimations: Of course, those types are distinct. Not the answer you're looking for? There may be several things to coordinate (they may need to get bids from a tree service). It only takes a minute to sign up. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Another increasingly common one: I didnt get to it. (No excuse given; they just didnt do it.) Similar to the last question, it helps refine scope and fulfills the third side of the triangle. "Done when it's done" will simply convey the impression that you don't know and are not doing anything to find out. 'Done' as in just finished coding it, or 'done' as in "the users are using it"? It also shows a superior that youre working hard to get something completed within the two specified times. I dont think thats going to work at all! Katie Holmes is a senior author at everyday-courtesy.com with over 15 years of experience in marketing and psychology. I didnt realize the project was going to take this long on your own. Doesnt more time need to be put into it? So it's an approximate number or range that gives a general idea of cost and that may help a prospect decide whether they would like to take the discussion further. rclayton.silvrback.com/software-estimation-is-a-losing-game, marcgg.com/blog/2015/08/27/deadlines-estimates-software-startup, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/132970/, The open-source game engine youve been waiting for: Godot (Ep. This is an introductory course on the key concepts of planning and executing projects. Model the system. 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. I suggest you to have regular progress update for your boss, customer or any stakeholder. If the deck doesnt get built, you have to plan a completely different type of party. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. Nobody has done an in depth analysis of all the implications. code and you start thinking immediately of all the things you might This works on the assumption that the remaining files to be copied will do so at the average copy speed thus far, which may or may not be a realistic assumption (dealing with tape archives here). Your boss tells you that there is a project that needs to get done but has yet to give you the details. . Is Completed or Has Been Completed Whats the Difference? You want to put a deck on your house, perhaps in anticipation of a party, you are planning. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. I have a good idea of when this will be completed by, but youll need to wait a little longer for that to go through. When they say it's too much, I pretend to think for a minute then say, "You're right! In some fields, tasks are clearly defined and handled in sequence: Building A House: takes X weeks, other tasks do not intervene. When asked about a completion date, what is the best way to say "it will be done when it is done"? Typically, I only wait 15-20 seconds for a response. Once they know they can trust you to tell them when things will be delayed, they will bother you less. Duress at instant speed in response to Counterspell. Difference Explained (Helpful Examples), What Does Within 24 hours Mean? Could very old employee stock options still be accessible and viable? Probably managers will not accept that :). Explain. Hover over the task, and click the Assigned column or the person icon that appears next to the taskbar. Track the time necessary for each aspect of the task and record the data. Can you find it online? Weight the second method more if the copy speed is unpredictable, and is likely to do things like speed up/slow down for long periods, or stop altogether for long periods. Different things take different amount amounts of time, effort and resources to put together. 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. Its not the best target time, but its going to have to do. This is unless you already fought this enemy. Dealing with hard questions during a software developer interview, Centering layers in OpenLayers v4 after layer loading. How do I politely ask about the "urgency" of a work request - i.e. Saying "5 to 6 months" is different than saying "150 days". In either case, on-going communication is key. I haven't tried it myself, but I'd like to, to see how accurate my estimations are. This is pretty easy to understand, and it is also clear that there is lots of uncertainty in those guesses. Estimates given at the coffee machine will (like the coffee) come back to haunt you. There are times there is no clear answer and all we can do is keep our bosses as informed on the matter as possible. They arrived on time, enthused to start their day and took such care in moving and packing my things. After all, if its something you want to do, go and enjoy it! Get more granular and identify the substeps of each part. Dont just make them wait. If youre crushing on someone, dont play mind games, he says. If 2 or more people working together, there's overhead of communication (phone calls, emails, meetings) and merging source code. Determine the scope of the problem. Ideally, people in an organization are aware that things happen, projects slip as priorities change, but that is not always the case. Browse other questions tagged, Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers, Reach developers & technologists worldwide. For example: Where factor is such that factor([0..1]) = [0..1], factor(x) <= x and factor(1) = 1. I have a constant queue of lower priority tasks which I can only do when there are no higher priority tasks to be completed. The new feature will probably break some assumptions you made in your There are way too many undetermined variables to consider here: Cluster capacity, cluster availability at time of submit, operation complexity, data or I/O latency to name a few. PMs would be responsible for this. You think this is ridiculous, you think you can pull this off in one week. Model the system. Takedown request | View complete answer on uplandsoftware.com How do you ask did you check politely? Tell them that they can talk to the manager if they disagree with the current priorities. How can the mass of an unstable composite particle become complex? There are a lot of tactics for creating them, all based on getting good requirements first. The completion time could do with fine-tuning. The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. Sometimes estimating becomes an enormous challenge for you and your team, especially when we are talking about software project estimation. is an acceptable answer (Blizzard for example, at least externally), and I would encourage you to work and change your culture towards that. For the last semester of your degree, you need to do an internship. It sucks, and it's wrong, but it's unfortunately reality. - Next Wednesday around 4pm. You have other things to do from past assignments and you will have to Make it clear where any contingency (if any) is added. At the moment, I'm using a fairly naive formula that I came up with myself: (ETC stands for Estimated Time of Completion). Whats the time frame right now? We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. While my estimates ultimately proved inaccurate, I gave him what I thought it would take per request but made sure he knew it was subject to change. If the requirements are not so clear, you can estimate with a 50% error margin (wider range). noise (random variations) and other inaccuracies, and produce values Assign values and error ranges (+/-) to each value. Of course, make this a computer application, not a physical board. What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? This is quite a hefty completion time! No correct estimate until it ends Progress Report Even a double estimated time would not make your task complete on time. Hold on, what did you say the time frame was again? This is also helpful with any assumptions you make. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? This is more work and requires more in depth thinking about the design and changes to the system, but is much more accurate, especially for larger pieces of work. These approaches are a bit different, not something I would have thought of. I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. The boss wants me to pass it to him, so he knows when to expect it all. I can't recommend that book highly enough. 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. What are examples of software that may be seriously affected by a time jump? It's not as common as ETA, so it's probably best that you don't use it often. Here's a good way to do it: Me: It depends on what you want me to do. Estimate at Completion = Actual Cost .
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