Antacids for the PM

PMs, can you imagine the look on the faces of those developers when I said that they needed to supply you with things like estimates and time sheets?  I bet some of them were knocked off their feet!

I mean it's not like you were asking them for anything difficult.  I mean, how hard can it be to create an estimate for a project?  It's not like it's rocket science.  Every developer should be able to do it.  I mean, the National Gun Registry hit it's target.  Well, maybe it didn't.  Well, what about the Denver luggage handling system?  Another fiasco?  OK, the FBIs Trilogy Project, now that was ... a disaster?

Everybody can look into the past and come up with failed estimate, but sometimes, the Project Manager does it to themselves.  This may be a shock for some of you, but sometimes Project Managers are under different pressures than you realize.  Back when I was younger I worked for a consulting company.  My job was to come up with the technical work plan and estimates for the projects the local office undertook.  I would then, using historical data and some darn fine guessing, come up with what the effort would be on the technical staff for the project (technical staff meaning project DBA and internal technical support). 

One of my proudest, and saddest, estimating moments came for a relatively simple business project that had a number of interesting technical complexities.  My estimate of the technical cost was 179 days.  When combined with the other parts of the project it turned out that this simple application was going to cost the client a lot of money.  In an effort to reduce the impact tot he client the scope was shuffled, but this did not reduce the technical effort that needed to be spent, so in a classic PM moment the number of days was arbitrarily reduced to 79.  I am proud/sad to say that this is one of the few times in my life where I was dead on with regard to the effort.

Project Managers, if your team says that something is going to take a certain amount of time, ask them questions, make sure they understand both the problem and their own estimate, but don't arbitrarily change it unless you know for a fact it can be done for less.  The odds are they understand what needs to be done better than you and by changing their estimate you are telling them that you don't trust them.  If you still feel the estimate is high, have them sit down with you and walk you through the estimating process they used.  But, if the numbers still add up to something you don't like, take a tums.