DOMINIKA: Hello, everyone. FLOOR: Hello!
DOMINIKA: Have you ever missed a deadline you've set yourself? I have and I believe
it's something we all share. It's not surprising before it's not surprising because most of
us weren't even born on time! [Laughter]. Yes. Just as Meri said, I work with hardware
and software teams, and I've set, missed, a lot of declines. It'd today, you will hear
three things your team needs to to know before they agree on a deadline. Some were so obvious
to me, I never thought of sharing them to my team. What I would like you to do is to
ask yourselves a simple question: how many days are there in a year? 365? That's exactly
what your team thinks. But the truth is, in the UK, in 2017, there are 252 working days.
It may seem obvious to you, but a lot of people still forget about that in their estimation
s. Yes, you know the difference. - do you know the difference between a junior developer
and a more experienced one? When a junior developer says something will take a week,
they think, "I have seven days!" [Laughter]. A more experienced one thinks, "I have five
days." Now, when was the last time you had full five days of uninterrupted work in a
week? [Shout from the audience] emails, conferences, bug fixes. The list going on. A year is less
than 250 days. A month is less than 20 days. A week is less than five days. When I was
presenting this talk to my colleagues' company last Monday, after that, I went to play fussball
with some software engineers, and one said to me, "I like this example but you've forgotten
about one thing: we not only work less than five days a week, we also work less than eight
hours a day." You know, we need to play fussball! [Laughter] Let's assume that your team knows
how much time they have for work. They're ready to set another deadline, right? It's
a trap! Actually, there are many of them. Let's explore some traps that kill our estimation.
First, there is - I will do it "in the meantime" trap. I worked with a guy who fell in this
trap a lot. We are planning another iteration of our device. We come to the Bluetooth communication
tests. He says, "I will do it in the meantime." He estimates it as a tiny task. Now, for hardware
engineers, these kind of tests may seem to take virtually no time. It is mostly waiting
for the results for a couple of hours. For the next five days, he spends 20 minutes setting
up the test every morning. He's curious, so he analyses partial data. He fixes a minor
bug to run the test better. All of that in the meantime. Everyone says that tomorrow
is a mystical land where 99 per cent of all human productivity, motivation, and achievement
is stored. Now, I believe that, meantime is a mystical land where 99 per cent of all human
focus is stored. Another trap is things we can't predict. Imagine you're organising your
conference, you set the date a year ahead, and suddenly a month before, Theresa May calls
the election! I had another experience of this kind. One day in late February two years
ago, I called to my local prototypes manufacturer and said, "Hey, John, I need 20 prototypes
in two weeks as usual." "No way. It's the it's new year in China." Chinese new year
is at least two weeks of holidays. All manufacturing stops, all factories are closed. People go
home. It turns out all the people who didn't know that turned to my local manufacturer
for rescue. Even though I was not ordering from China, I got delayed. What are traps
are there? The research trap. Your team needs to research new technology, and it always
takes more than anyone expects. Documentation, contact-switching, outsourcing - whatever
comes to your mind right now, remember it. Remember it because that is your trap. Remember
it and tell people about these traps so they can take them into account in their estimation
s. Let's now move to the third big thing. The third big thing is priorities. We are
so used to delays that moving yet another deadline doesn't even feel bad. On the other
hand, we meet for Christmas dinner every year on the very same day. Have you ever heard
about Christmas being postponed because the Christmas tree wasn't ready? [Shout from audience].
Or because gifts from Amazon didn't come? Why do we always meet for Christmas dinner
on time? We always meet for Christmas dinner on time because date is our common priority.
Because being on time is our common priority. What other priorities do you have in your
projects? Product quality, user experience, money, ? Everyone has a default priority they
use. I once worked with a team of hardware engineers. Their default priority was low
cost. To meet a deadline, we need our part in ten days. The team chose low cost, a standard
nine-days delivery. What do they miss? An express option would be guaranteed five days.
A standard option is not guaranteed. The manufacturer has some problems, something goes wrong, he
gets delayed. We get our part of a 14 days. We kept low cost but we missed a deadline.
Just like with Christmas, time was our priority. But it wasn't clear enough for everyone. So
just how important is it for the whole team to share the top priority? Essential. So what
can we do to help our teams estimate better ? Simple. We can make sure they know how much
time they have for work. We can make sure they know what traps they can fall into. And
we did make sure they know what the priorities are. If you want your team to agree on deadlines
they will meet, make sure they know what you know. Thank you. [Applause].