>1. Marketing management asks Engineering management how long it takes to do feature X so they know when to launch the online ad campaign.
Why can't Marketing just wait until the feature has been built to launch their campaign?
Why can't Marketing just wait until the feature has been built to launch their campaign?
And there's always the possibility that if you announce too late competitors will eat your lunch.
One way to handle this is to spend some time on a formal estimate. Two to four weeks of R&D to scope a project can help narrow estimates to something approaching realism. You'll still be wrong, but you're less likely to be hopelessly wrong.
Asking someone for an instant opinion is madness. That's not an informed estimate, it's just a guess, and usually worthless.
That said, I've only ever seen one software project consistently meet production deadlines. Is there benefit to committing to the original schedule with Partner X if there's no way you can deliver on schedule? Or is it one of those things where Partner X has committed itself and they have no real choice but to work with the sliding deadlines?
I'd say that some aspects of the capability maturity model make sense, even for engineering groups that practice agile day-to-day.
Definitely. I used to see that all the time in the games industry. Getting the right launch window is critical because most of a game's sales happen in the first few days of launch. And yet, games are famous for shipping months, even years late. They usually seem to make it work. I guess you'd be particularly hosed if you couldn't afford the burn rate for the extra X months it would take to get to a decent launch window.
1. Marketing management is full of idiots.
2. The coder's estimate is used to tell the CEO when a product will be rolled out. Who then questions why it didn't get rolled out on time.
3. Marketing gets a bonus for rolling out ad campaigns on time.
4. Marketing is using this for their big trade show coming up and wants to make a big announcement for maximum impact.
Why do you assume management is always competent?
At least, I think that’s the best reason for using estimates. I wrote something about this here: https://riskfirst.org/Estimates
Surely there’s more to it than that?