The Developer Estimate Conversion Table: What ‘A Couple of Hours’ Really Costs
'Should take a couple of hours' converts to roughly one fiscal quarter and a missed birthday. A reference table for PMs, clients and developers.
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SOFTWARE
Transcript: ‘It’s Just a Small Change’ (It Was Not a Small Change)
Client: 'It's just a small change.' Developer: opens LinkedIn. The full transcript of the most expensive sentence in software.
MAKE THIS WORSE →Daily Standup Phrasebook: What Your Team Actually Means
'Still working on it, no blockers.' Translation: I have not started. A brutal phrasebook for the fifteen-minute meeting that eats forty.
MAKE THIS WORSE →Expedition Notes From the Legacy Codebase: Nobody Comes Back the Same
Day 1: Found a function called doStuff2_FINAL_real. Day 4: It controls payroll. Field notes from deep inside a legacy codebase.
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