Making it Big in Software: Get the Job. Work the Org. Become Great

Chapter 13. Avoiding Software Development Overruns

“Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

—Douglas Hofstadter, from Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Few things will damage a software developer’s career more than consistently being late with what he or she is asked to produce. It’s not just that completing work late fosters an image of the developer being tardy or underproductive. Most software projects are designed and implemented by teams of people. When a single programmer is late, there’s a massive ripple effect on the entire team and a cascading effect that can propagate to marketing and sales and, ultimately, customers. The financial impact can be serious. ...