> Best thing OP can do is learn from the mistakes and speak up next time during planning phases, well before deadlines slip.
How do you know deadlines are going to slip when planning the project? Makes no sense.
How do you know deadlines are going to slip when planning the project? Makes no sense.
Surprisingly, it works relatively well to estimate how long the project will actually take.
It falls apart if you're talking about 10's to 100's of people working for weeks/months/years, or wherever you need to compete with other vendors for the contract.
However sometimes, it can be a calculated risk, for most projects, something is provided by the client, and generally they are also late on their parts. If played correctly it can hide delays on your side.
Also, being over-optimistic in a bid doesn't mean you have to be over-optimistic internally, you could set realistic expectations internally and "manage" properly the delays on the customer front.
Just to be clear, this is a cynic view of things. Every time I see something like that, I cringe inside (and even outside).
However the 2x rule can be quite limited in big projects as it doesn't account for the overhead induced by the size. In a team of hundreds, 30, 40 or 50% of the efforts can be lost due to difficulties in communication, management layers, heterogeneous set of competencies and skills, etc. It's harder to identify what this overhead could be. They can be huge differences between relatively well integrated teams and a complete mess.
3 hrs => 6 days
2 days => 4 weeks
Or say 2 decades and get all the praise when you come in under time and budget.