Every week, our team starts out by going through tasks, announcing which we didn't get done last week (if any) and bidding on the new tasks which need to get done. Theoretically, each person can get 12 "jellybeans" of work done per week. A couple of weeks ago I was caught off guard because one of the tasks wasn't described completely and, as a result, took much longer than expected.
The karma police noticed. Yesterday, one of my tasks turned out to be much smaller in scope than was expected and I got almost half a week's work done in one day. Life is good.
Re:Estimation
Ovid on 2004-06-03T16:14:04
With my former company, my estimates were (usually) within plus or minus 10% of the actual time the task took. Of course, I also broke everything down into manageable tasks and estimated those one by one. I also knew the system cold.
With my current job, I'm glad the estimates are in "jellybeans" because I don't know the system well enough to provide dead accurate estimates -- not to mention the fact that we don't really have the luxury to sit down and break everything into manageable, estimable pieces. Still, working on a team is the way to go. I really enjoy it.
