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About Integrity in Software Development
What does it say of you if you vastly over-quote effort to for an internal project?
A few years back while I was taking my specialist diploma in Big Data and Streaming Analytics, I had a classmate who was a senior database developer. We seldom talk. However, once knowing that my company is looking to hire, he chanced an opportunity to have a small talk with me.
Given that I have similar experience as him in database design and development, we discussed a bit deeper on this topic and more generally on projects that we had done, how we go about doing them, and touch on pros and cons, benefits and conns of certain design versus user requirements, scalability and future-proofing. At one point in time, we discussed on effort estimate when it comes to project/release planning, and how we did it. I shared with him that when my team was quoting effort estimate, our practice is always to have a little buffer. The main reasoning being that it is usually management practice to cut by 30–50% without cutting scope while still keeping timeline unchanged and also we have to factor in bug fixes and supporting UAT during non-office hours.
When it was his turn to share, he said something that, unfortunately, would have cost him an interview if the interviewer were me; No matter how experienced and skillful he might be.
