Last month I had a few unfortunate experiences where deadlines were missed and a lot of extra work was spend on what was perceived as a simple and easy task. Of course it is never fun to miss a deadline and have to spend extra time (and money). But these things happen, it is and remains ‘just’ an estimate. There is always some uncertainty and risk at play.
And don’t forget Hofstadter’s law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
So that an estimate is wrong doesn’t bother me too much and can be expected.
Sidenote: Delays are part of life, if you are a regular user of the Belgian public transport system you should know.
What I didn’t like was that no communication was done and I only learned a few weeks later that we would miss our deadline. If the delay was communicated well ahead of time it wouldn’t be a big deal. At that time we could have discussed with business what to do. Could we push the deadline, involve extra developers, reduce the scope of a feature, …?
However by waiting to communicate to just before the deadline, it only lead to frustration, escalation(where I got involved) and this blog post 😄.
The lesson to learn here is:
How and when the delay is communicated matters far more than the delay itself.
And now stop reading and go back to work before you miss your next deadline!