Comments for The White Room http://www.euperia.com/stuff The personal site of Andrew McCombe, Website Engineer Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:29:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 Comment on 10 Things a programmer needs to be by Aaron Brady http://www.euperia.com/stuff/?p=199&cpage=1#comment-49 Aaron Brady Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:29:01 +0000 http://www.euperia.com/stuff/?p=199#comment-49 Wanted to add to #3 and #5: #3 - Always over estimate as much as you can get away with. You can revise your estimates down once you're 50%-or-more complete and look like a hero. Customers will take any amount of down-sizing estimates, but are less tolerant (obviously) to over-runs. Then you can "bank" the reduction to use against other tickets which may have gone over. #5 - The mythical man month says only the programmer can document things, but they should write roughly and have a copy editor produce and typeset the formal documents. It's an awesome book that speaks to almost every point on this list, too :) Wanted to add to #3 and #5:

#3 – Always over estimate as much as you can get away with. You can revise your estimates down once you’re 50%-or-more complete and look like a hero. Customers will take any amount of down-sizing estimates, but are less tolerant (obviously) to over-runs.

Then you can “bank” the reduction to use against other tickets which may have gone over.

#5 – The mythical man month says only the programmer can document things, but they should write roughly and have a copy editor produce and typeset the formal documents.

It’s an awesome book that speaks to almost every point on this list, too :)

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