This was a daily standup meeting I had in a company that (thought it) was doing Agile development.
Manager: We need to bring over the XYZ feature from the Berlin project. Estimate it.
Dave: Three days
Jim: I say a day, two days at the most.
Steve: Three days, tops.
Bill: I worked on this feature. It's never worked. I estimate six weeks. Quite probably longer. There are a lot of unknowns that need to be addressed first.
Michael: No there aren't. It's in the product baseline, so you just have to activate it. Two days.
Manager: Agreed. Two days. Assigned to Bill. I'll tell the customer it will be ready next week.
Six weeks later...
Manager: why are you still holding things up? The customer is screaming that we're overdue. You promised this would only take a week!
Bill: No, *you* promised it would take a week. I told you it would be six weeks minimum. And that was with lots of unknowns.
Manager: Everyone in the scrum agreed it should only take two days.
Bill: And yet you assigned it to the one person who said it would take six weeks.
Manager: You were the only one who had experience with XYZ.
Bill: Yes, and that's why I said six weeks. Funny, that.
Manager: Unacceptable. I'm re-assigning this to Jim. And the VP assigned you to another team starting next month. If you can't get this done, I don't need you in my team anyway.
Bill: 👍 🥳
Five *months* later, I was getting panicky emails from the group, asking for my help to explain how the "two days, tops" migration feature was even supposed to work in the first place. They couldn't find the baseline, they couldn't even find the requirements.
The real schadenfreude was when the customer demanded to know why the original estimate was only a week. Apparently they tried to pin it on me, only to find my emails in the email chain saying it was months of work. That led to the customer asking why, when the only person experienced with the feature said it would take months, why did the manager overrule him and say it would be week, hmm?
This was a daily standup meeting I had in a company that (thought it) was doing Agile development.
Manager: We need to bring over the XYZ feature from the Berlin project. Estimate it.
Dave: Three days
Jim: I say a day, two days at the most.
Steve: Three days, tops.
Bill: I worked on this feature. It's never worked. I estimate six weeks. Quite probably longer. There are a lot of unknowns that need to be addressed first.
Michael: No there aren't. It's in the product baseline, so you just have to activate it. Two days.
Manager: Agreed. Two days. Assigned to Bill. I'll tell the customer it will be ready next week.
Six weeks later...
Manager: why are you still holding things up? The customer is screaming that we're overdue. You promised this would only take a week!
Bill: No, *you* promised it would take a week. I told you it would be six weeks minimum. And that was with lots of unknowns.
Manager: Everyone in the scrum agreed it should only take two days.
Bill: And yet you assigned it to the one person who said it would take six weeks.
Manager: You were the only one who had experience with XYZ.
Bill: Yes, and that's why I said six weeks. Funny, that.
Manager: Unacceptable. I'm re-assigning this to Jim. And the VP assigned you to another team starting next month. If you can't get this done, I don't need you in my team anyway.
Bill: 👍 🥳
Five *months* later, I was getting panicky emails from the group, asking for my help to explain how the "two days, tops" migration feature was even supposed to work in the first place. They couldn't find the baseline, they couldn't even find the requirements.
The real schadenfreude was when the customer demanded to know why the original estimate was only a week. Apparently they tried to pin it on me, only to find my emails in the email chain saying it was months of work. That led to the customer asking why, when the only person experienced with the feature said it would take months, why did the manager overrule him and say it would be week, hmm?
I wonder how bad it's gotten in presales during our "vibe coding" era. 😬 😖