What percentage?
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My projects always get to 99% really quickly, and then the last 1% takes months ... :-\
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTLThat's just like the 80/20 rule. It takes 80% of the projected time to complete the first 20% of a project and then takes another 80% of the projected time to complete the last 80% of the project. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Donate to help Conquer Cancer[^]
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That's just like the 80/20 rule. It takes 80% of the projected time to complete the first 20% of a project and then takes another 80% of the projected time to complete the last 80% of the project. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Donate to help Conquer Cancer[^]
I always saw that stated in reverse. It takes 80% of the time to finish the first 80% of the project, and then in takes 80% of the time to finish the last 20%.
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull
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I always saw that stated in reverse. It takes 80% of the time to finish the first 80% of the project, and then in takes 80% of the time to finish the last 20%.
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull
That's the beauty of the 80/20 rule; it can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Occasionally I get asked what
percentageof a project I have completed. My reply once was"83 percent"Really unhelpful suggestions for other replies welcomed...You always pass failure on the way to success.
Nonononono! The catch is that the total number of cents is not based on 100 cents as the name suggests. It's rather based on a variable number usually several times higher. Now, when your boss asks you how the project's goin' you should always smile:cool: and say well, I've completed XX% where XX is >> 50. And as you approach 100, the newly arrived issues will add to the total number of cents, thus increasing total over the suggested name. The important thing is to keep smiling, looking cool and in control, optimistic above all, lookin' good boss, lookin' good!
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Occasionally I get asked what
percentageof a project I have completed. My reply once was"83 percent"Really unhelpful suggestions for other replies welcomed...You always pass failure on the way to success.
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GuyThiebaut wrote:
what percentage of a project
I sometimes respond with "42", just to see if they even get the reference.
Grim (aka Toby) MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue IS NOT NULL (0 row(s) affected)
Do you say "42" while nibbling on a biscuit and twitching your nose?
You always pass failure on the way to success.
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That's just like the 80/20 rule. It takes 80% of the projected time to complete the first 20% of a project and then takes another 80% of the projected time to complete the last 80% of the project. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] Donate to help Conquer Cancer[^]
I've actually had a similar and very Dilbert-like experience in real life. During one of my previous jobs I was assigned to a project the boss claimed was "90% complete" and expected me to finish it in a little over a week. (This implying that it had already been worked on for at least nine weeks by a previous developer who was then reassigned to a different project.) During that one week however it became clear that there was something seriously wrong with the given estimate. I ended up having to explain to the boss that although perhaps 90% of the required functionality had been implemented, it was actually that "90%" of every project that only takes about 10% of the actual work to implement (or auto-generate with some tool!), and the remaining "10%" (the parts requiring some actual effort!) would in reality take a lot more than just one week! To make things worse, what had been built already was actually just a .NET replica of a previous system from a different platform, with a 100% correspondence in specs. Which ofcourse just amounts to an unneccesary re-invention of the wheel, is likely to be costly and will probably just introduce new bugs! The whole thing had obviously been grossly underestimated from the onset, and the implementation/port had been tossed of in such a hurry that it was riddled with obvious defects. Subsequently the client was called in for a spec-review meeting, where said boss didn't even show up in person, leaving me alone to explain this mess somehow to the client. After the meeting it finally dawned on me where the heck that ghastly "90%" figure had come from, it was in fact the relative size of the requirements gap! Later discussion with my boss reluctantly revealed him as having totally underestimated the client's expectations, that the project was already way over budget even before it was assigned to me, and then told me to "just find a way to fix it ASAP!". I was of course outraged and pointed out how utterly unreasonable that was, and after several weeks of fingerpointing and me hopelessly trying to come up with a silver-bullet to rescue the project, the stupid boss still had the nerve to fire me for not succeeding! Not only was I completely run over by this fool, but the treatment I recieved was also a multiple-violation of worker legislation. Fortunately for me it didn't take long to find a new (and much better!) job, and I wasn't at all surprised recently when I found out that the previous company is now out of business and has been filed for bankruptcy
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Occasionally I get asked what
percentageof a project I have completed. My reply once was"83 percent"Really unhelpful suggestions for other replies welcomed...You always pass failure on the way to success.
Hmmm... Let x be the amount of work done. Let y be the total amount of work required. Assume y is effectively infinite. x / y ˜ 0 (The same reasoning that Douglas Adams used to prove that the universe in uninhabited.) Rats, the "approximately equal to" sign didn't come out right. :(
modified on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 3:33 PM
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Hmmm... Let x be the amount of work done. Let y be the total amount of work required. Assume y is effectively infinite. x / y ˜ 0 (The same reasoning that Douglas Adams used to prove that the universe in uninhabited.) Rats, the "approximately equal to" sign didn't come out right. :(
modified on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 3:33 PM
:laugh:
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
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I've actually had a similar and very Dilbert-like experience in real life. During one of my previous jobs I was assigned to a project the boss claimed was "90% complete" and expected me to finish it in a little over a week. (This implying that it had already been worked on for at least nine weeks by a previous developer who was then reassigned to a different project.) During that one week however it became clear that there was something seriously wrong with the given estimate. I ended up having to explain to the boss that although perhaps 90% of the required functionality had been implemented, it was actually that "90%" of every project that only takes about 10% of the actual work to implement (or auto-generate with some tool!), and the remaining "10%" (the parts requiring some actual effort!) would in reality take a lot more than just one week! To make things worse, what had been built already was actually just a .NET replica of a previous system from a different platform, with a 100% correspondence in specs. Which ofcourse just amounts to an unneccesary re-invention of the wheel, is likely to be costly and will probably just introduce new bugs! The whole thing had obviously been grossly underestimated from the onset, and the implementation/port had been tossed of in such a hurry that it was riddled with obvious defects. Subsequently the client was called in for a spec-review meeting, where said boss didn't even show up in person, leaving me alone to explain this mess somehow to the client. After the meeting it finally dawned on me where the heck that ghastly "90%" figure had come from, it was in fact the relative size of the requirements gap! Later discussion with my boss reluctantly revealed him as having totally underestimated the client's expectations, that the project was already way over budget even before it was assigned to me, and then told me to "just find a way to fix it ASAP!". I was of course outraged and pointed out how utterly unreasonable that was, and after several weeks of fingerpointing and me hopelessly trying to come up with a silver-bullet to rescue the project, the stupid boss still had the nerve to fire me for not succeeding! Not only was I completely run over by this fool, but the treatment I recieved was also a multiple-violation of worker legislation. Fortunately for me it didn't take long to find a new (and much better!) job, and I wasn't at all surprised recently when I found out that the previous company is now out of business and has been filed for bankruptcy
Man - that sucks, sounds like you had a really bad experience. However like you say - the chickens eventually came home to roost.
Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.(Winston Churchill)
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J4amieC wrote:
It should be pretty obvious that the required answer is one of 25,50,75 or 100% complete
What is obvious to me is that a percentage is made up of 100 individual parts whereas 25,50,75,100 is more a of fourths kind of thing. So would it not be be more obvious to ask "How many fourths of the project are complete"? Maybe if the PM explained they wanted it in quarters I would understand what they meant by percent. :)
You always pass failure on the way to success.
At least you only get 100 parts to play with I have to complete forms that ask "... what is the probability of reaching goal (blah-blah) by date (some stupid date in the near future)" so that would be a number plucked from the infinity between 0 and 1 then? :confused: