PoddarCo

It’s December – end of year to-do’s, vacations, last minute shopping, scrambling with work requests, enjoying time with families, etc. So instead of a regular post, just a brief thought to share.

Scoping and budgeting are integral to any software release or project.  One month’s left in the calendar year, and 40% of the budget is still there to spend or lose. That doesn’t mean you rush order more hardware than you planned for.  Or you cram many extra features through development even if you don’t have the requirements flushed out or the developers / testers available.  Use left-over funds judiciously and plan project spend/cash-flow for the next year better.

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One particular Monday,
You: Can you give me a total estimate of the effort needed for your team to complete this task?
Team A lead: It will take 10 days.
(You both discuss more stuff, but this is just the simplified gist to highlight the point made in this post)

Two weeks later, on Friday, reviewing a few reports for the prior weeks

What just happened? A total disconnect between effort and duration. I can cite countless other examples when clients have been quoted timelines and costs based on flaky estimates; when project baselines have been developed without clarifying whether the time quoted was effort or duration.  Let’s explore the rest of the conversation (adapted from a real conversation).

Following Monday,
You:  So, the time you quoted me two weeks back, was that effort or duration?
Team A lead:  What do you mean?  I am not sure, it was both.
You:  Can’t be.  In the last two weeks you spent $30K getting the work done, instead of the allocated $10K.  How many resources did you have working on this?
Team A lead:  3 resources.
You:  Exactly.  Each resource on your team costs $1000/day.  If your effort was 10 days worth of work, and you employed 3 resources simultaneously to do that work, it would be completed in 3.33 days at a cost of $10K.  Instead your effort was 30 days worth of work and with 3 dedicated resources it was completed in a 10 day duration, thus costing us $30K.  This just shot our budget by $20K.

Admittedly, this post contains a very simple thought and some points of contention i.e. who could have done things differently, what could have been done better, when things could have been caught or rectified, etc. etc.  But exploring it all would be like publishing a research paper, not a blog post.  So to contain this, I purposely simplified it to point out one fundamental issue I have observed repeatedly – effort is not duration, and duration is not effort.  On large complex projects with many teams and resources getting to this granular detail is tougher than it seems, and many times it is categorized as “not worth it”.  Often you will ask for effort, but only get duration back because some team managers don’t want to commit to such an undertaking.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of looking into both, and tracking both as frequently as permissible. 

In conclusion,
du⋅ra⋅tion [doo-rey-shuhn, dyoo-] – noun
the length of time something continues or exists

ef⋅fort [ef-ert] – noun
the amount of exertion expended for a specified purpose

Most people realize the difference, what they fail to realize is the importance.

I encourage you to share what your experiences have been in trying to get estimates from other teams: the challenges, the good, the bad, the ugly.  Your comments end e-mails help me research and write more about what’s pertinent to you.  Appreciate all the messages you have sent me thus far.  Hope to continue to provide material you care about. – V

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