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SCHEDULING REVISITED

by George Martin

Start ı Experience Required? ı An Example ı Requirements ı Estimating ı User Interface ı Breaking it Down ı Sources and PDF

BREAKING IT DOWN

When I worked for a large company, instead of scheduling 40 h per week for engineering, I scheduled only 32. That other 20% (8 h) went into general overhead. Production would need engineering help, as would sales. If you had one designer working on this project at 40 h per week, the time to complete would be 20.15 weeks, assuming no vacation, sick days, nor other interruptions. Currently, my independent status lets me schedule a full 40 h of effort per week. Be careful converting task estimated to calendar time.

Also, I did not link any of these tasks in a dependency relationship. Clearly you canıt move motors until the hardware is in place. You canıt even design a user interface until you have an agreement on the requirements. Therefore, the start date is not yesterday!

Did I leave anything out? Probably. Will there be surprises and changes to the plan? Yes. That is why you have the contingency.

How good are these estimates? Well, Iıve done most of these tasks before, so Iım confident with the numbers. But, what if youıve never done something like a calibration routine before? How can you estimate that task? Ask your coworkers. Ask industry experts. Gather all the input you can and then take your best guess. Break that unknown task into its smallest steps, and measure your progress. You should be able to predict the outcome before youıre halfway through.

Next month, Iıd like to talk about making the switch from assembler to C and bringing up your first project. Until then, good luck and keep good records. Youıll see the results on your first project.

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