How long is it going to take?
A person further up the food chain hovers over your shoulder or a client asks simply over the phone, “How long is it going to take?”. Simultaneous emotions and drivers compete in your brain. Your inner dialogue goes something like,
“How long should it take someone who was good at this job? I want to be seen as great at my job! …like I actually know what I’m doing! …if only I really knew what I was doing! …what’s a number that gives me a chance and will keep them happy?”
You say something ‘reasonable’ and so it begins.
This is a common trap in my and many other industries where a person further up the managerial chain (who typically knows why but not how) asks a more junior person (who mostly knows how and not why), how long a task will take.
The power imbalance causes an overly optimistic time estimation (what the boss wants to hear), which in turn becomes an estimation that they are held to for many reasons including because the senior person tells the client or their boss that ‘it’ will be done by ‘X’.
To achieve the timeline and maintain their reputation, the junior will work beyond allotted hours without pay to make good on their ‘aspirational’ estimate. This quickly becomes an office culture where the practice, through no direct effort of thier own, is now supported by unpaid overtime and rapidly burning out staff leading to disruptive staff turnover. Worse yet, the initial time estimates become the basis of future fee estimates effectively baking in the unsustainable behaviour.
Sound familiar?
To counter this I often mentor junior staff to:
Point out that you do not want to give an unrealistic answer or set unachievable expectations. Get the asker to agree with you.
If you really don't know how long it will take, ask for a moment to query a more experienced member how long they think it will take and for a general strategic approach to the task (these two must go together). This could even be the asker themselves. This way if it starts to take longer, then the strategic approach can be queried and the two of you can work together on honing the approach, learning and upskilling as you go. BUT if they need an answer right away and someone who knows is not available, go back to point 1 and HEAVILY caveat your answer (ie: get them to accept there is a high degree of risk using this estimate - an email record of this with your answer will serve you in future if there is blow-back) but use the approach outlined in 3 below.
If you have an idea of how long it might take, to give two estimates; Answer 1 - the 'milk run' = if everything works out and there are no unexpected complexities it should take ‘A’ time. Answer 2 - 'the nightmare' = if it gets complicated (in rationally anticipated ways) it could take ‘B’ time. Then if a single answer is still needed, take the average; (A+B)/2.
Approach 3 is what I try to use internally. We commonly tend to give idealistic, optimistic estimates and these end up hurting us. The approach is akin to the phenomenon of the accuracy of crowds where the weight of a cow, or the number of jellybeans in a jar is guessed by many. The individual guess could be anywhere along the bell curve, but that middle of the bell curve? It’s scarily accurate as the number of guesses goes up.
So give yourself multiple personalities and guess away! I’ll bet you only one of those guesses will be the ‘milk run’ estimate and there will be many ‘nightmare’ and ‘semi-nightmare’ scenarios to consider, all moving your average to closer to something that wont completely burn you.
And if you are a manager in the position of “how long?” get into the habit of asking for both estimates before you commit.
Thank me later.