Clayton’s Weblog

While the whole article is interesting, this bit from Joel Spolsky’s recent article in for Inc really rang true:

Think of it in these terms: Mama walruses deliver their calves at the end of a 15- to 16-month pregnancy. You might ask the mother to commit to 15 months and she might say, “No problem!” Or you might say, “Fifteen months? Are you crazy? We need this in eight months!” Of course, haggling like this can’t possibly make things happen any faster, and even if you get the walrus to agree to an eight-month timetable, I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’ll never happen. You can have a schedule that says 11 months, but you’ll still ship in 15 months, because that is how long it takes to make a baby walrus. Sixteen, sometimes.

We have a project going on at work now that was originally supposed to be in field trial by the end of the year.  The principal on the project is leaving the company, so now it’s gotten tossed over the wall to us.  We need to come up with a new date by the end of the month.  We only have a rough idea of what the final solution will be, and all kinds of interesting questions about the scope of the project.  Thankfully the project is actually fairly interesting, and our management is generally pretty understanding of justifiable schedule slips.