> The problem with CPFF is that programmers who are optimistic about
> their estimating ability tend also to be optimistic about their
> productivity; if you underestimate, you end up working most of
> the time for a lousy $75/hour or whatever your base rate is.
Oh -- not that I usually follow up twice, but I had one of those
palm-slapped-to-the-forehead moments.
Maybe this will explain my admittedly cavalier attitude toward estimates.
Some of what I do is programming: C, shell, Perl, all that sort of thing;
some is markup: HTML, troff (for documentation); some is system admin; some
is ISP stuff like sendmail/DNS/web servers/news; some is security like
firewalls/cops/tripwire; some is architecture; some is straight Unix/Linux
system admin; some is web-connected: CGI-BIN & friends; and some of it
doesn't fall into any of these categories.
But nearly all of what I do is not something that lends itself
readily to estimation. That's because I usually find myself doing
something that is sufficiently different from everything else I've
done, and from everything I'm aware of that other people have done,
that there's just not much to compare it with. (Example: "Hello.
We've been hacked. We need you to come in -- NOW -- and completely
rebuild all of our web/mail/etc. servers from scratch. We are off
the air and bleeding customers. We have no backups. Help. Help help.")
(Reply "It's 3 AM. I am asleep. My dog is asleep. We are very
comfortable. How much money do you have to spend on this?")
So rather than spend lots of time trying to come up with an estimate
that I think has a low probability of being adequately accurate to
be truly useful, I wing the estimate and spend the time doing the work.
I suppose I should also admit that I don't use Gantt charts (or whatever
is currently trendy) either. I figure that if I'm doing something
so complex that it requires one, that my plan is over-complex and
rather than documenting it, I should fix it by making it simpler and
thus eliminating the need.
Part of this is probably also due to the fact that I'm accustomed
to winging it and needing to make it work. I spend just about as many
hours in a week paddling as I do working, and when I'm out there,
the consequences of a bad decision can involve being inverted
in freezing water and slam-danced into rocks. Compared to that,
the consequences of a blown time estimate are relatively minor.
I now await comments about all those blows to the head having
a cumulative effect. ;-)
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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