What do you mean ‘we need more time’? Project schedule estimation in software
I&#x27;m about to being a rant here because this is a larger problem than anybody likes to admit.<p>Developers are good at development.  By and large, they are not good at task management, project management, and certainly not estimation.  One of the primary reasons for this is that their plates are always overflowing and they work more efficiently than many people in other professions.  They shift priorities on the fly when work in one area cannot be progressed.  Development time is social currency.  You can make your boss happy by progressing his priority, or you can make someone else happy by progressing their priorities.  Not many developers truly answer to a singular master.  And few allocate time for learning although we all spend a significant amount of time doing it - how else do we maintain relevant skill sets?<p>Can a developer really estimate a project and tell his manager that 3 weeks in the timeline are for 2 unknown and unforeseen problems that require interaction with vendor support?  No, because the manager will fight back and say that those 3 weeks are really just zipping up logs and making three phone calls and &quot;if it takes anything more than that, hand it over to me!&quot;  Most can&#x27;t tell their manager that it will take 2 weeks to parse a CSV because the source data is shit and they have too many other things they are working on.  So they stay an extra 6 hours in the office and get called a rock-star until the day that they opt to go to their child&#x27;s school play instead.<p>The solution to this problem is simple.  Take task management and project estimation out of the hands of developers.  It&#x27;s time for the return of the secretary to the workplace.  A single $50-80k administrative assistant could easily support, manage the priorities of, and improve the outward facing communication for five developers.  With experience doing so, that admin could provide better time estimates for all of them and would be better at negotiating realistic timelines than any of them individually.<p>People have been coming up with methodologies and software to solve this problem for decades.  Developers don&#x27;t have brains built for project management.  Yes, they <i>can</i> do it, but they don&#x27;t get paid to work in MS Project.  They get paid because they know the difference between a bubble sort and a quick sort and when to use either.  Conversely, I don&#x27;t know a soccer mom who doesn&#x27;t successfully manage a more challenging schedule and competing set of priorities better than every nose-down developer I&#x27;ve ever met.  Give appropriate work to appropriate people.  Developers have their talents.  Scheduling, estimating, and task management are not among them.