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Liz, you know that project that we've been talking about for three months that we don't have any specs for yet? It's going to be due on November 15th, and you're going to be in charge of a key portion of it. Please give me a breakdown of tasks and time estimates for this portion. I'll need it in an hour.
So let me get this straight. In one hour, I have to figure out what steps are going to be necessary, even though we don't know what it's going to have to do, what hardware we're going to use, or even necessarily what operating system we'll be working with, and give you moderately realistic estimates of how long each of these steps will take, hoping that my numbers don't add up to more than four weeks?
BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!
I took longer than an hour, but not much longer. I made some guesses. I outlined specifically for the manager which areas were so fuzzy as to make my estimates completely worthless, and what pitfalls might affect my estimates and by how much. I came up with a range of 32 to 75 man-days, compressible (by adding more people to the project) to no less than 20 to 50 "actual" days.
Before sending it back to the manager, I showed it to my supervisor, who knows as much as anyone does about this phantom spec-less project. He answered one of my hardware questions immediately and made a suggestion for a sort of disclaimer he thought I should tack onto the end of my estimate, but said he thought my numbers were pretty reasonable. (He also said they hadn't decided to actually do this portion of the project - that they were thinking of outsourcing it to a company that's actually equipped to do it correctly. I'll be more than relieved if that's what they do.)
I was slightly amazed and pleased that he thought my numbers were good - I never know how to estimate these things, and for a project with no specs...? Oh, well. I sent them on to the manager who'd requested them. Of course, he's going to look at that minimum compressed number of 20 days and tell the customer, "Yeah, my technical people have said they can get this done by deadline," and then not give me the five additional programmers I said I'd need for that much compression. (He can't - we don't have that many programmers to spare.)
Yep. The next month is going to be a little freaky. Don't you love great huge lumbering pachyderm companies? (I need a new job.)
Much to my own surprise, not to mention everyone else's, I'm looking at a spider-themed Hallowe'en. I'd already decided that my own costume will be a spider. (Don't look at me like that. Hit Target for black tights, cotton gloves, and fiberfill, and you're there. I'm all about cheap and easy Hallowe'en costumes.) I downloaded about five possible jack-o-lantern patterns early this week, and two of them were spiders. And my latest craft project is a spider decoration. (There's a picture on the second page if you want to see it.)
He's cute. I admit, I got a little weirded out when I realized they'd actually given him a (sortof) two-section body and that I had been crocheting merrily along holding onto his spinners, but I firmly reminded myself that it was just yarn, took another look at the smiling spider in the picture (and yeah, now that I knew it was there, I could see the back section in the picture...) and kept going. Stuffed, he's too fat to be scary. Now I'm making legs. I finished the fourth this morning, but they go relatively quickly, so I'm hoping to get them finished tonight. The pattern directions even come with directions for making the web to hang him in.
My only problem is figuring out where to hang him. I thought at first of putting him across the door to the guest bedroom, but I do occasionally need to go in there. I thought about hanging him on the porch, but I don't want him to get wet and icky - I might want to save him for next year! (Mildewed spider. Ewww...) Maybe I'll just take him to work and hang him on my office door. We don't have any decorations up there yet.
Word of the Day: pachyderm - any of various thick-skinned hoofed mammals, such as the elephant or rhinocerous
News of the Weird: Net gardening for couch potatoes
- Mankind recently took another giant step away from the real world and into the virtual one with the launch of a Web site for gardeners who can't actually be bothered to do any gardening.
MyVeggiePatch.Com offers all the thrills and spills of cultivating your very own crop of turnips without any of the attendant dirt or hard work.
Where do you think I should display Chester the Spider?
- none (damn, but I need a trip to the bookstore)
Current Projects:
- Chester the Spider (a crafty thing)
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