Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to talk about why you should always add a time buffer on to the end of all of
your projects.
Okay, I was talking with someone recently about their launch of their app. So, they
had like a release date at the end of February. They announced it to everybody
that they were gonna have this big launch, but there was some trouble with
the developers, and they had to push that launch back and had to notify everybody
that the release was gonna be delayed. And this is something I don't
really do very much personally. I've never done an app launch where I get a
big announcement or anything like that. I - just for me - I'm just really kind of lazy.
You know, we developed the app, when it's ready, gets approved and everything, we
just put it live. This is for my - for my own apps. But I have a lot of clients where we
have this kind of problem where we have deadlines. So, we have client
projects - lot of times, it's just a sort of - the deadline is we promise that at a
certain date and we need to deliver at a certain date and there's other times
where it's for an event or they publish some sort of release date. And it
gets a lot more stressful and there's pluses and minuses to that. If you
have that set deadline, so like we have, we do some for like events, we
know that we have this event coming up and we know that app has to be ready
by this date. So, we give enough time for Apple to approve it. So, we get everything
out there, we get enough time for everybody to test it, everything like
that. Like this person was telling me about the release dates getting pushed,
what we try to do is manage the expectations of the development. So, if
it's one of the ones where I'm I get some other developers to work on it for
me, one of the things I'll do is I'll make sure that we have plenty of time to
release something. So, unlike what the person was telling me where they had to
push back the release and make this big announcement and all that kind of stuff. It's
just - it's common sense. It reminds me when I was a web developer
working in a small company. I would had a project manager and he came to
me and they asked me for a quote on how long something would take. And I told
them it'd take about, it's take about five days. He says, "Hmm, are you
confident in that five days?" And I said, 'Actually, I think it's gonna be like
three days, but I want to give you five days just - I just want to say five days
just in case something goes wrong." Cuz something always goes wrong. Something,
you know, you just want to make sure you have that buffer. I'm not
saying you charged the five days, I'm just saying you make sure that you have
that leeway in case your computer crashes,
in case something goes completely wrong, in case you get sick, who knows? You
always need to make sure that you, you don't blew the deadlines about
the actual time that you think it's gonna be. So, the project manager said to me -
most project managers that I've worked with and I'm not a big fan of project
managers because of this - they'll say, "Hmm, five days? I don't know why it would take
you five days to do this." Even though they don't know any of the code or and
how anything works. They're just - they're just trying to bargain me down,
which is really annoying because they don't know anything about anything. But
so, even when I told them it would need three days it would need five days, yes okay. hat
sounds good. And he said, "So, what happens is you tell me five days, I tell
them seven days, and then they tell the further on people nine days and
they just sort it goes up escalates and escalates and escalates, which
sounded ridiculous to me at the time. But, it does make a lot of sense, right? With
some clients, when we have an event and we have a certain amount of time to get
something done, did not to say anything bad about them, but sometimes, they'll see
that as an opportunity. Like if we deliver something ten days early, they'll
see that as an opportunity to add ten days of changes. And that's one of the
benefits of having a released like an event or a date that you cannot miss is
because you just put that thing on time and eventually Scope Creep stops,
everybody realizes it has to get done at a certain time. And sometimes, when you -
when you release something, you have to release it at the right time, so that it
doesn't encourage Scope Creep. So, they're not looking at - so like say you deliver
something ten days early and they look at it for three days and go, "You know,
we've been talking here in the office..." and that's just that
everything's gone wrong. Whatever follows that, whatever follows,
we've been talking here in the office or I've been showing this to my friends and
that means there's gonna be some changes. Some scope we've going on, so a
lot of the times, we make sure is we have everything ready here with enough time
that we could. So, we check everything, do all the testing locally, like if I
have a developer doing it, if they tell me it's gonna be done by the end of
February, then I'm gonna say what we're
gonna tell the client will be the end of the mid-March or the end of March. And
depending on how big the project is. Then if they have an ongoing
client, then they can tell them that too. And this makes perfect sense,
especially when you're dealing with big project. You need to take the stress out
of this situation. I'm not saying you shouldn't
have a launch because that makes sense. Am I having that end date, you
definitely need to have that. Otherwise, you'll be like me and you'd never get
anything done on time. And also, never tell the developer what the real
end date is. This is because then they'll see that as a as permission to slip,
because they're gonna - they might slip anyway but you need to have that
deadline in place. And if they come to you and say, "I'm really sorry. We're gonna
be five days late." (thinks) "Okay, alright." But you have
that buffer in place, but you don't want them to know what the kind of buffer you
have. I know it sounds sneaky and it sounds kind of like you
don't trust the developers, but no, you do. I can tell you as a developer, when I've
been working on something and I've just feel like I need to have it done by this
Friday and I got everything and it's like Friday afternoon, it's Friday evening,
I'm like, "Oh, my God! This is not gonna happen!" And then somebody comes up to you
and says, "Look, I'll give you a couple more days." Because they - because
they have that buffer in place. It's like they have - it's like they have a little
bit of money left in the bank. Almost like this is, "I'll bail you out. Go home.
Have a good weekend. Let's look at this on Monday. This gotta to get it done by
Tuesday." And that is the most as the best feeling in the world. Where you're just like,
"Oh, thanks so much! Because your deadline, you have a little bit of
leeway there. If I knew that I had till Tuesday, I can tell you what, I
would do it till Tuesday. It's - what is it called? it's called Parkinson's Law.
Work expands to fit the time that you give it. This is why when you hit a
project, if you say I'm gonna give myself two hours to do this, I'm gonna give
myself half a day to do this. I'm gonna get myself whatever to do this as
opposed to I'll get this done one of these days, or what can I say,
and it takes as long as it takes. Well then, you just take as long, as long
as it does as it takes. I was talking with somebody recently about this,
segwaying a little bit, when they were talking about how they had to developers
or designers they took. One of them was really fast, one of them was
really slow. They're wondering if the really slow person was trying to cheat
him. And I said, "Look, some people just work that way. Some people are just,
they're just slower than others." I mean, I've been quoting on jobs in the past
for like an investment banks where I thought, I think this will take three
days. I'm gonna - but it's not me doing it, so I'm gonna tell them -I'm gonna tell the
developer that's doing it, I'm gonna give him six days. And I go to the developers
saying, "I'm gonna give you six days for this
little project." And he goes, "That's a bit ambitious, isn't it?" We all have
different expectations and you have different mindsets. And by the way, never
trust anyone who says it will take 20 minutes,
it might take 20 minutes, but then you know, that's when the computer
freaks out or the file system is slow, or there's a hard drive crash or there's a
blackout or something bad happens. And then he's telling you why he didn't get
it done in 20 minutes. Alright, this is one of the things you learned early on. I
remember, I used to try to impress everyone with how quick I give the time
skills. "How long will this take you?" 'Take me one hour only." "Well, that would
take me, that would take me five - five minute job." And you know, and then they'll
come back in five minutes or seven minutes and you're like, "Oh. I'm just
freaking up the screen now, alright? It just - they don't appreciate that.
Whereas, if I tell them - if I think it's gonna take five minutes and I say, "Give
me an hour." Then you know, even if it does take me five minutes,
then I have plenty of time to make sure everything's goes right,
I could test everything. Usually, I don't do projects that
fast or that - of that small duration. The danger is
Parkinson's Law. Once I know in my head that I have an hour, then I'll - I
might think I'll just take a bit more time on this or I'll do this in 55
minutes from now. Which is just, it just happens. So anyway, and you see this with
movies too. Movies don't just film all the way up until the end. They have test
screenings, they make sure they have it in the can early, so they can do
test screenings. make any changes. They need to all that kind of stuff before
their big launch releases. So anyway, rambling on loads here today. Sorry about
that. So yeah, I mean, for those of you who've
had projects with like a hard deadline, and I mean hard deadlines. I don't mean
like somebody's gonna get angry if you miss it. I mean like they published it
everywhere it has to be done by that time, if it doesn't release, then people
are walking around without apps at an event. Or you know, they don't have
something. We had - one place I was working an investment bank
and we had this big website rollout and for some reason somebody in the
marketing department decided they would put posters up all over the bank saying,
"new website coming out on this date" and it was just like - it was like
the date that we had told them it was gonna be done. And it was like it was -
there was no wiggle room there. So, as soon as they saw
it over like in the last few days of development, they're saying, "Hmm, I don't
know if I like this font. Or if we move this over here..." It was too late. I mean, we
didn't have any wiggle room and then their expectation was we should
just work all night. So anyway, the point of this long ramble today is make sure
you give a buffer when you're quoting for clients. Make sure that the
time you need - you think you need to development - develop or if you
have developers that you work with the time that they give you, is not the time
that you give to your clients and then you give yourself a little bit of
wiggle room there. Put a little bit of margin, in time margin in, so that
you can can get out of those kind of situations. At least that's my experience.
You might disagree with me but you know, we'll see. Anyway, that's it for today. You
know what, it's Friday! But I'm gonna do one tomorrow. I'm gonna do a Saturday
one. You know, talk a few days ago about why do you do it every day, but
not a lot of people watch? Dammit! We're gonna do a Saturday one tomorrow! So, I'll
talk to you, guys, tomorrow!