Manager: We (meaning you) need to do task A. How long will it take?
Me: Task A will take X days to do.
Manager: That seems awful long.
Me: How long do you think it should take?
Manager: It surely could not take any longer than Y days.
Me: Ok, it seems you have an answer to your question then.
Later:
Manager: It’s been Y days, why isn’t task A done yet?
Fun fact, you can play tough too.
It’s surprisingly effective, especially with a bit of seniority.
Regardless of how effective it is at managing expectations, my reality is:
Mgt: We need A within Y days.
Stf: A will take X (>>Y) days, A/2 can be ready in Y days.
Mgt: O.K., give us A/2 in Y days.
Y/2 days elapses.
Mgt: In addition to A/2, please add B, C and D to the deliverable.
Stf: You realize, that’s going to take an extra 2X days to deliver.
Mgt: yes, but we absolutely need B. C and D, whatever it takes, as soon as possible, don’t waste time releasing A/2, bundle them all together for efficiency.
Stf: Coming up.
3X/2 days elapse.
Mgt: you know B, C, and D that we asked for? Actually, what we need are D, E and F.
Stf: well, we’ve finished A/2, B and half of C. When do you need D, E and F.
Mgt: ASAP, put C on the shelf.
X more days elapse.
Stf: here’s A/2, B and D, how do they look?
Mgt: You know, the full A would be better… but E and G are our absolute top priorities…
In programming, you ideally have a queue / FIFO of work tasks. Or, if things are more dynamic, a priority queue.
If interrupts are necessary, you get a stack of tasks. It is much slower because context switches eat time.
I had a job with a data structure I called a compost heap. One started with the thing on the top. While one was at it, another thing would be thrown on the top, and one had to start working on it. One never could really finish anything, and the things deeper down the heap started to rot. After a few years, the stack depth would be like 40 or 50 items. I made an appointment with my new manager to talk about prioritising things and the result was he put a new, urgent task on the stack.
They got angry when I handed in my notice.
I had this for about 6 years running, eventually we marked the bottom 90% of the heap “won’t do.”
This was in the early 90s, I kept track of the items on “sticky note” software on my Windows 3.1.1 desktop. At the top of the sticky note I placed a gothic font “The Creeping Feature Creature” label. Two or three times a week my boss would stop in on his jog (he lived a mile away) with a new idea, and we’d prioritize it into the stack - most new ideas went just below whatever I was still working on. Every few months we’d reshuffle the list. It was a workable arrangement because I was the only programmer and he was the company owner.
When we started working on bigger contracts for outside customers, he shut the hell up and let me get the contracted work done.
I like “Y days? How are you doing it so it takes less than X?”
Oh nice one.
You can also add another layer by adding “you know that [infrastructure requirement] from [notoriously uncooperative infrastructure team] is gonna take at least Z days right?”, and if it isn’t enough, go for the kill shot “I’m gonna start writing the architecture principles this sprint, getting back to you as soon as they are cleared by [notoriously picky and detail obsessive software architect].”.
Made me want to become that notorious software architect, just to be the reason that “X is going to take Y days. Want faster? Change your fucking expectations/scope of X”