{"id":141,"date":"2015-03-25T12:56:58","date_gmt":"2015-03-25T18:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/?p=141"},"modified":"2015-03-25T13:04:12","modified_gmt":"2015-03-25T19:04:12","slug":"overcome-optimistic-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/2015\/03\/overcome-optimistic-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcome Optimistic Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Because I recently delivered a lecture at Utah Valley University titled &#8220;Overcoming Optimism&#8221;\u00a0I&#8217;m tickled by Seth Godin&#8217;s quick <a href=\"http:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2015\/01\/optimistic-time-vs-honest-time.html\">post on optimistic time<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>Giving optimistic estimates can seriously handicap a web developer.<\/strong> \u00a0The people getting your\u00a0estimates use them as a yardstick for judging your competence. Often they don&#8217;t have any better yardstick for judging your ability than how well you make your own deadlines.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">It&#8217;s hard for you\u00a0to be good enough to make up for consistently missing your own estimated delivery dates.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Rule of thumb:<strong>\u00a0Treat every estimated date as a commitment.<\/strong> Give yourself plenty of time to be wrong.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">How can you become good at this? Pay attention to your track record. Actually take notes on the estimates you give and how they turn out. Ask yourself some questions and adjust your estimating behavior:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><strong>How many of your estimates are you hitting?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><em>Less than 80%:<\/em> you probably need to give bigger estimates.<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><em>100%:<\/em> you should consider whether you are being aggressive enough.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><strong>How frantic are you toward the end of a schedule?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><em>Never in any\u00a0rush:<\/em> probably not aggressive enough.<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><em>Hair on fire every time:<\/em> give yourself more time.<\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><em>&#8220;What deadline?&#8221;<\/em> Ouch! You need to care about deadlines.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A link to a Seth Godin post on &#8220;optimistic time&#8221; as well as some advice on how to make better estimates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[33,31],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-executive","tag-estimation","tag-professionalism","post_format-post-format-link","wow fadeInUp","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.managerjs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}