Estimation - Tag - In a past life… https://archive.jtimothyking.com/tags/estimation/ Estimation - Tag - In a past life… Hugo -- gohugo.ioen-usSun, 25 Sep 2005 22:21:00 +0000 The Intuitiveness of Time-boxed Iterations https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2005/09/25/the-intuitiveness-of-time-boxed-iterations/ Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:21:00 +0000 J. Timothy King https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2005/09/25/the-intuitiveness-of-time-boxed-iterations/ It started as a math project for my fourth-grade daughter and turned into a lesson in project management. I flipped a coin 10 times, counted 3 times that it came up heads, and recorded this on a bar chart: the bar labeled “3” on the axis labeled “Number of Heads,” one trial. We repeated the experiment, recording more trials to the chart. Eventually, we colored a familiar bell curve, big in the middle and tapering off to the sides. Each trial, we expected to see 5 heads, and on average, that’s what we got. Sometimes, we got more or fewer, and once we even got none, but mostly we got about 5.

]]> Honestly https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2005/09/03/honestly/ Sat, 03 Sep 2005 17:26:00 +0000 J. Timothy King https://archive.jtimothyking.com/2005/09/03/honestly/ (Note: This is a post from my online journal, imported into this blog because it tells the story of a real software project I worked on. Who says software developers don’t have war stories? -TimK)

I know why good people don’t tell the truth. That’s not to say they outright lie. They’re not dishonest, just not... honest. They fudge. Maybe that’s what I should’ve done. After all, that strategy is time-tested and approved. Software projects slip for months, one day at a time. By the time the whole story eventually is clear, everyone’s gone on to something else, and no one knows what really happened, because no one was keeping track, and no one thinks twice about it. What made me think speaking the truth up-front was going to feel good?

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