How to explain to non-technical person why the task will take much longer then they think?

Posted by Mag20 on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Mag20
Published on 2011-02-13T15:06:31Z Indexed on 2011/02/13 15:32 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 356

Filed under:

non-programmers

|

estimation

Almost every developer has to answer questions from business side like: Why is going to take 2 days to add this simple contact form?

When developer estimates this task, they may divide it into steps:

make some changes to Database
optimize DB changes for speed
add front end HTML
write server side code
add validation
add client side javascript
use unit tests
make sure SEO is setup is working
implement email confirmation
refactor and optimize the code for speed
...

These maybe hard to explain to non-technical person, who basically sees the whole task as just putting together some HTML and creating a table to store the data. To them it could be 2 hours MAX.

So is there a better way to explain why the estimate is high to non-developer?

© Programmers or respective owner

Related posts about non-programmers

How to introduce web development to non-programmers?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Once one of my non-programmer friends asked, "I have a cool website idea that I don't want to share. Rather I want to develop it on my own. So, I want to learn web development. Tell me what to do?" And sometimes many other people asked about how to start with web development as a profession. But… >>> More
How do you share your craft with non programmers?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Sometimes I feel like a musician who can't play live shows. Programming is a pretty cool skill, and a very broad world, but a lot of it happens "off camera"- in your head, in your office, away from spectators. You can of course talk about programming with other programmers, and there is peer programming… >>> More
How do you share your craft with non programmers?

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
Sometimes I feel like a musician who can't play live shows. Programming is a pretty cool skill, and a very broad world, but a lot of it happens "off camera"- in your head, in your office, away from spectators. You can of course talk about programming with other programmers, and there is peer programming… >>> More
A report writer for non-programmers?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello, we are wanting for users to be able to write their own reports in our application. It is a web application. We don't care if they must download an application in order to create reports, but we need for them to be able to print off reports from the web in PDF format or similar. The report… >>> More
Language for non-programmers to start learning programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
A non-programmer friend will be starting the Computer Science college course in a few months. I'd like her to try her hand at some programming before she starts her studies (the course itself expects one to know C, but it's an horrible language to learn to program at). What language would be the best… >>> More

Related posts about estimation

SQL SERVER – How to Force New Cardinality Estimation or Old Cardinality Estimation

as seen on SQL Authority - Search for 'SQL Authority'
After reading my initial two blog posts on New Cardinality Estimation, I received quite a few questions. Once I receive this question, I felt I should have clarified it earlier few things when I started to write about cardinality. Before continuing this blog, if you have not read it before I suggest… >>> More
LTO(4) tape shelf life estimation?

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
LTO tapes, Maxell in this case, are often marketed as having 30 years or more shelf life when stored under "optimal conditions" Is there a way to get a good estimation to the shelf life, given parameters such as relative humidity and temperature etc? Obsolescence of the tapes aside, is there a way… >>> More
Noise Estimation / Noise Measurement in Image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hello. I want to estimate the noise in an image. Let's assume the model of an Image + White Noise. Now I want to estimate the Noise Variance. My method is to calculate the Local Variance (3*3 up to 21*21 Blocks) of the image and then find areas where the Local Variance is fairly constant (By calculating… >>> More
proper concurrent users estimation case studies

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I've been asked to size a web architecture for an excessive number of concurrent users ( hundreds of thousands ). I'm having a hard time convincing these people that unless you are in the top 5 of your country websites it's quite hard to hit those numbers. Can anyone provide some real world case… >>> More
What is better: set up underestimated or overestimated deadlines?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Suppose you are a project manager. You can estimate an effort in days for specific task for specific developer. After performing estimation you obtain some min and max values. After this you delegate a task to developer. Actually you also set up deadline. Which estimation is better to use when set… >>> More