Today I am grateful for my test suite. I had to install my handiwork on a production box for the first time today, and the test suite made short work of identifying and fixing problems. It’s astonishing what testing for the seemingly obvious will catch.
A test suite is a courtesy to the next sap charged with the task, as well. Why make them hate you and your mass of bugs any more than strictly necessary?
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Why is it that when I am asked to estimate a project, I switch into abused-dog mode? My first instinct is to dive under the desk and whimper, which I promptly suppress in favor of other, hopefully more productive approaches.
So the last time I was asked, I stewed about it for 24 hours, talked with management-experienced friends, then finally did the sensible thing: I went to a colleague and ‘fessed up. “I’m not that good at this. And not only am I not good at this, I can’t calm myself enough to make myself good at this. May I get some help?” Why certainly. So yesterday we started to break down my project into finer detail. I drew up a spreadsheet with tasks, estimated each on a story point scale, added it up, and multiplied by 3 to account for the fact that I’m not Donald Knuth. I added a column for actual time, and hopefully, over time I will get an idea of the value of my own personal human coefficient, which I suspect will be rather high.
I reviewed Andy Lester’s Preventing Crisis talk, and asked my former colleague Buddy Burden for the story point scale in use at Rent.
| Story Points | The Buddy Scale | The Dave Scale |
| dink | “We’ve already spent more time talking about it than it would take to just do it.” | An issue added that is quick to implement i.e., < 1 hour, equivalent to .25 story points |
| 1 | “Pfft. That’s nothing.” | hours |
| 2 | “That’s not too bad …” | hours to a day (or two) |
| 3 | “Not too awful, but non-trivial.” | a few days |
| 5 | “This is some real work.” | days to a week (or two) |
| 8 | “This is surprisingly difficult.” | a few weeks |
| 13 | “This really sucks.” | weeks to months |
| 21 | “There’s no way one person could do this by themselves.” | weeks to months for multiple people |
| 40 | “This is a major project.” | months for multiple people |
| 100 | “If they truly understood how heinous this was, they wouldn’t want to do it any more.” | months for a lot of people |
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Posted by perlgerl
My employer, Eric Larcheveque, presents Prixing, the price-comparison mobile application for Android (and soon for iPhone). It currently only works in France, but world conquest is in the project plan.
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