Re: Estimating time
2. Determine product maturity - Is the product existing or in development?
If the latter, how stable is the current version? Is it something you can
play with? Otherwise, have functional specs been developed? Is the feature
set stable?
It can really screw you up if the keep changing the product features
midstream.
I can't resist giving an extreme example here. I was brought into one project at an early stage. It consisted of about 14 modules, and nearly 3000 pages of documentation. Within six months, a subcontractor and I had documented everything to that point.
Unfortunately, the project leader had no idea how to manage, and the developers kept adding and changing features. It didn't help, either, that the developers knew that they would be laid off at the end of the project. Changes were made. And changes were made. Sometimes, we'd take a screen shot and find that the interface had changed while we were inserting the shot into the doc files.
Anyway, to make a long story short, we re-wrote virtually everything in the manual at least four times, and some things five or six. I went off and did another contract for eight months; I returned and the sub-contractor departed, and what was supposed to be the final touch-up on the project stretched from two months to four, and still there was no sign of the project ending. Finally, 26 months after I had first started the project, I announced that I had written the last word and went off to another job. For all I know, the project is still unfinished.
I now refer to the experience as The Project That Wouldn't Die.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"Waiting for the ferry, tickets in their hand
Good people that were never out of sight of land
Waiting for the ferry, tickets in their hand
Good people that you knew would never understand."
-OysterBand, "Not Like Jordan"
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RE: Estimating time: From: Dugas, Andrew
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