As I walked into the office this morning, I overheard a new college hire on the phone with her manager. The two were engaging in a typical staff/manager one-on-one conversation. The newbie asked her manager how does she estimate how long a task will take? Great question! As I said in my last post, estimating is an important skill.
The manager’s response surprised me. The manager gets credit for being honest. Her response, “I do not know. I struggle with that myself.” She then went on to say that the time that a task will take varies by who does the task and to what degree of quality the task is done with. This suggests the manager has a grasp on two key components of estimating.
I believe that estimating is a basic ability of someone at a project manager level. The skill is fundamental to the success of consultants. How does one move through the ranks without this basic skill? On one of my own projects, I have a manager level resource that is filling the role of developer on the project. After three months of duration, he finally said yesterday that the development work would be done today. Imagine waiting for three months of a five month project for a date of when the project would complete development. The manager/developer’s delivery of the work is impressive. As a manager, his inability to estimate and provide when the development will be done is concerning.
Irony! I intended to kick this blog post off with the manager/developer’s story, until I walked into the office this morning to find someone else struggling with the ability to estimate. The key differences between the two resources are that one is just beginning their career and the other is decades into his career, and one recognizes the importance of effective estimating, and the other feels it can’t be done until the day before the work is done.
Ultimately, the ability to effectively estimate is a key skill. I will be providing tactics for approaching estimates for the time that tasks will take, project timelines, and project costs in upcoming blogs for those interested in growing this key skill. Meanwhile, if you are looking to grow other key skills, you can find lots of resources to help you at Continue Learning | My Blank Job.