And try to recognize that if my answer is "Two weeks! How do you give your top choice a little nudge? by accurate I mean that a stakeholder holds you accountable for. If you are unsure about how you are asking, try writing it out, or rehearsing your (polite) request for a deadline with somebody you trust to give you honest feedback. After all, if its something you want to do, go and enjoy it! But when your back's against the wall and they refuse to give you better details, Fake It: You can use duration to show that you have a good idea of when you might have something completed. Method 1. (Off the record, I call these "guesstimates".). One way would be to put: Requesting Status Update (on the subject line) and write something similar to: "As discussed, I am waiting for ________ (name of project) which has a deadline of ________ and I would like to know, as of immediately, the status and your expected date of completion." They may have good reasons. Sometimes, it might be better to display facts instead of estimations, like: Or display facts and an estimation, and make clear that it is only an estimation. For example: Where factor is such that factor([0..1]) = [0..1], factor(x) <= x and factor(1) = 1. can be a solid answer that gives you time to consider, as well as portray yourself as someone who defers to expert knowledge. An excellent resource for studying statistical learning methods is The Elements of Investor EM $10K), A Seller's contribution towards closing costs with a Preferred Lender (contact lenders directly for closing estimate - lender list in photos section) PLUS an additional $5K with a Preferred Lender towards escrows . Weight the first method more if the copy has a fairly consistent long-term average speed, even if it jumps around a bit locally. But it does. Having tried to handle it amicably will have been documented if your neighbor suddenly objects. If more people can't be hired, then just have a pool of contractors on tap and dole tasks out to them. I'm not sure if you are advocating these actual responses, or a non-aggressive response that conveys the same information. It does require some experience in your field and the task at hand. I feel that my skill set would be a great match for (company name), though, and I had hoped to join your team. make a forecast on how much time it will take you to accomplish a task; use this forecast in your planning; add enough extra time for safety; measure the time it actually takes to accomplish the task; document the hours spent on a task in your journal; compare forecast and actual time after finishing the task; learn from this comparison; Delivered is another simple choice when it comes to setting estimated times. What are some tools or methods I can purchase to trace a water leak? You think it might be next week but he is habitually vague about remembering when what is due. Imagine you have applied for some jobs. Often times I will include any uncertainty or possible variations with the estimate along with how the changes may impact other areas of the system and the extent of regression testing required. Make it broad. Dear Property Manager: We are the owners of a home at 123 Maple Street. We understand you manage the property at 125 Maple Street. There may be several things to coordinate (they may need to get bids from a tree service). Nice suggestions. Next, select the resources you'd like to assign to the task, and enter either the Avg Hours/Day or Total Hours. 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. Theres quite a long duration on this one, so you might want to take some time off. Read more about Martin here. How about a kanban board for each employee? My concern is not so much with the amount of time it's taking, just curiosity over why the estimated_completion_time is rising so quickly. 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? Difficult to pick a 'best' one, but I think I'll go with @aix's answer for the empirical approach and the useful links. 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. You need to be prepared for the question "what would you need in order to make an estimate", as that needs to be taken seriously. Based on comments on other answers, it appears that your problem is not time estimating but communicating delays based on changing priorities. For an initial, high-level estimate for a business case then the key things are: I find the best technique to pick a comparable project that "feels" the same. 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. Make assumptions to fill in the gaps based on your best guess of what they want. This value is refined after each transfer. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. As a rule, clients need a ballpark figure at the beginning of the project. That is something that you should never say. But: politeness is always the best way to start. This is your responsibility to factor in unless you expect others to have the expertise about this area. You have other things to do from past assignments and you will have to Its not going to be completed by the original time we stated. Too often, people feel pressured and make the mistake of over-promising. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. Consult historical data. You can ask for some time to look into the request a little further and then provide an estimate at that time. I imagine it ultimately comes down to company culture, or the disposition of those who you are working with. Difference Explained (Helpful Examples), What Does Within 24 hours Mean? How detailed is the estimate you show your customers? Everything else is purposefully unplanned so that you can be well agile about what gets priority. Modified 4 years, 6 months ago. Im sorry its not quicker! Its a very confident phrase, so you need to make sure that you can be certain that its achievable. The food sounds amazing. In some situations, we need to know how to ask nicely. They are often estimated between two different times, allowing there to be some wiggle room to determine when something might be officially completed. 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? I suggest you to have regular progress update for your boss, customer or any stakeholder. 542), How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. It must have gone into my spam. Or: Oh, sorry. What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? 542), How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Master 101 frequent business situations with our eBook! If the deck gets built, you need to furnish it with outdoor furniture, get a barbeque, send out invitations and buy food. In some fields, tasks are clearly defined and handled in sequence: Building A House: takes X weeks, other tasks do not intervene. 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. 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. Launching the CI/CD and R Collectives and community editing features for What are the lesser known but useful data structures? There are companies/cultures where "When it's done." Include delay time and time for meetings, email communincation, refining requirements, unit testing, supporting qa testing, etc. . as an answer that requires a mild verbal pimp-slap in response. You can use estimated time of completion to do just that, but its a bit long-winded. Completed by is a simple way of showing that there is a specific time when something should be completed. Here is the link, if you want to check out the menu and prices.. You have to estimate the time of completion considering the best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and . let me know that they need to assess the situation and come up with a solution. @ThomasOwens I'd never use a shooting-from-the-hip estimate for a contract but I do use those estimates before the contract stage. in your estimate to get a better number. Can you find it online? how to ask for estimated time of completion emailthe hardy family acrobats 26th February 2023 / in was forest whitaker in batteries not included / by / in was forest whitaker in batteries not included / by $5,000 Builder Price Increase Effective Immediately for March. Getting non-programmers to understand the development process. By the way, all of the above responses assume you are 'senior level' worker responsible for their own scheduling. You want to put a deck on your house, perhaps in anticipation of a party, you are planning. When asked about a completion date, what is the best way to say "it will be done when it is done"? Option 1: Assign both users and estimated hours to a task at the same time. Present a range based on what you know today. Ie, each developer enters how long they think each task will take, and later, how long that task took, and it guages how accurate each developer is with their estimates to produce a probability curve for a finish date. Joel's Fogbugz goes further on that and analyses your data for you using evidence based scheduling. Time estimation is just iterative estimation. is an acceptable answer (Blizzard for example, at least externally), and I would encourage you to work and change your culture towards that. when you don't know, How to respond to, "How long will this take?" No need to re-estimate from scratch when you want to add, remove or replace features, services etc). Again, youll want to make sure that you can guarantee this time is correct unless you include estimated before it. What are good methods given the start time and the current progress? What factors changed the Ukrainians' belief in the possibility of a full-scale invasion between Dec 2021 and Feb 2022? Whats the end time youve got in mind? Because the time was broken down so minutely, I could tell early on if I was slipping. 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. If not, then he saved 7.5 hours over what it would've cost him if I'd done it without an estimate. Some advice from the dark side from one who learned the hard way. Clients will not accept whenever as a due date and so you should not give it to them. A recent study from the University of Connecticut found that . Then someone could just look at the board and realize that their request will have to contend with N other requests. As we mentioned, estimated completion time refers to the time a service request is expected to be finished. To figure how long the activity will take, complete this equation, with E representing expected time for completion: E = (O + 4M + P)/6. That's bad advice, and a poor approach to these things. An outright lie, or a date you have no intention of keeping would be worse. The whole point is the stakeholders aren't sure if it is even worth doing the project - which is why they need the numbers for the business case. Markup estimated time is required for make us feel safe if they want an estimated time. Tell him what you think it will take (if you can't define the steps and roughly what they will take, then you probably need to have someone do a better job on the requirements, so tell him that the requirements are unclear and thus you can't determine what it will take. I cant be dealing with estimates right now. It only takes a minute to sign up. Because I have some sort of bizarre mental block that makes me think everything sounds like it'll two weeks. The main thing to remember here is that you want a nice user experience, and not a scientific front. 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.. Saying "5 to 6 months" is different than saying "150 days". Rename .gz files according to names in separate txt-file. 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. A newly proposed product or project will be similar (in size) to one or more already completed products or projects. Were really sorry if thats going to cause any issues. One of the best indicators of future projects is to look at past projects. The most common place for it to come up is in the military. Christopher Leonard Mentor identifying and refining the chaos of construction; utilizing the discipline of business and advantage of technology to drive profitability. 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. It has worked out fine for stack overflow. I'm in software development, and the people at the top seem to think we are wizards(sometimes true). As a result, I always end up giving estimates that I later realize I cannot fulfill. Ive seen that the end time will be in a few days, and Im happy to wait for it. View Syllabus. @r.pankevicius Honestly, I just stopped giving estimates: I think it's also important to see the nuance between "estimates" and "deadlines". All that will do is irritate your manager and make you look incompetent. I have worked on a project similar to this. In which case, why can't you say? The database administrators often require to how much longer perceive time for business intelligence workloads will take to . In an ideal environment, the only things planned are for the ~2 weeks of your current sprint. If you are asking for something and you need it by a specific date, be crystal clear. Is Completed or Has Been Completed Whats the Difference? Give a range. Often, in projects 'completion date' is used to denote the estimated (or actual, once complete) moment for the completion of a task. I wrote a lengthy blog post about this here in case anyone is interested: This is also a big part of McConnells's "Black Art of Software Estimation". Was he nickel-and-diming? Continue with Recommended Cookies. Estimated time to complete is a value that is expressed in hours of work required to complete a task or project. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. As such, this stops your manager from planning out the bigger picture. Manage Settings State your assumptions. have to refactor. Generally, I start this sort of project at around $X. Welcome to Grammarhow!We are on a mission to help you become better at English. The boss wants me to pass it to him, so he knows when to expect it all. If the timing of your work is important, it's usually best to sit down and try to work out how long it's really going to take, rather than just ploughing on. Model the system. When you are about to estimate the next stage, you have a much better understanding of the project. How long is acceptable to wait for a text? Estimates given at the coffee machine will (like the coffee) come back to haunt you. They may also be worried about hurting your feelings or coming off as being confrontational. Joe seems like a great worker, you seem unreliable now. Once you have enough of a sample size of how much work you are getting through each week, provide a 90% confidence interval for what's left to give a (usually) ever narrowing date range as the project progresses and the amount of work left (hopefully) shrinks. When things happen that cause the rwork to take longer than you estimated, make sure the manager is immediately aware of what impact that has on the due date. Record information about the problem you are estimating, your estimate, and the actual values. The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. By clicking Accept all cookies, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy. It came to around 20-25% of what I billed. This answer reinforces my belief that estimates must be given in hours, not in firm dates. OK, maybe more diplomatically than that. Answering "how long will this take?" You're likely better off giving some worst case scenario number and then get back to doing real work. Estimated completion time of forEach() method. Assign values and error ranges (+/-) to each value. It could take a few hours, days, weeks. 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. 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. I will be booking it when they open tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. 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. I can't tell you how many times I botched up an initial meeting with a client by not putting on professionalism when giving an estimate. Start by trying to get that deadline in writing: (Boss), thank you for letting me know about that project that is coming up. 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). Jordan's line about intimate parties in The Great Gatsby? Planned Maintenance scheduled March 2nd, 2023 at 01:00 AM UTC (March 1st, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. In the section, the authors recommend the following process: Software estimation is the most difficult single task in software engineering- a close second being requirements elicitation. I appreciate how patient youve been. Tell them that they can talk to the manager if they disagree with the current priorities. What techniques have you found useful? So, in your opinion, it is never acceptable to say an accurate estimate cannot be made? I sent him my estimate for each task along with that detailed breakdown. . Err on the side of the looser estimate. 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.