{"id":491,"date":"2015-07-23T22:39:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-24T02:39:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/?p=491"},"modified":"2015-07-23T22:39:58","modified_gmt":"2015-07-24T02:39:58","slug":"that-annoying-moment-in-a-project-when-you-discover-you-underestimated-the-complexity-of-a-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/2015\/07\/23\/that-annoying-moment-in-a-project-when-you-discover-you-underestimated-the-complexity-of-a-task\/","title":{"rendered":"That annoying moment in a project when you discover you underestimated the complexity of a task"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It happens. Hopefully less often as you get more experience under your belt. You take a quick look at a task on a project and based on previous experience with &#8220;similar&#8221; tasks, you give what you think is a fairly accurate estimate of how much time and effort it will take. And then you start into the task. Two hours in and you start rethinking that estimate because you&#8217;re learning that the task\/project\/problem is a bit more complex than you originally believed. The key here is not to freak out and try to rush and finish the task &#8211; that generally never ends well. The best option is to communicate &#8211; inform and educate the stakeholders on whats happening and provide a new estimate based on the reality of what you&#8217;re experiencing. Communicate early and often, but don&#8217;t overdo it or your communication will just become noise (or worse). This will help everyone stay on the same page.<\/p>\n<p>And next time, your estimate will be even more accurate (and reality-based) because of this experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It happens. Hopefully less often as you get more experience under your belt. You take a quick look at a task on a project and based on previous experience with &#8220;similar&#8221; tasks, you give what you think is a fairly accurate estimate of how much time and effort it will take. And then you start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[39,38],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-communication","tag-estimate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemdesign.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}