18 July
2014
Estimation: Delta style
Woke up at 4 am to catch a flight at a God-forsaken hour. As the flight door was closed, the pilot announced maintenance issue and gave an estimate of a 15 minute delay to get the paperwork done. One and a half hour later, we are still drinking terrible coffee sitting right where we were.
I think all Delta pilots have a background in running IT projects 🙂
Ugh! Hope your Friday gets better soon!
Monica, that is okay. Flight delays don’t bother me any more. In fact, it is awesome fun to watch everybody’s reactions…
Oh dear !!!!
As an IT project manager I want to say something here. I have good coffee 🙂
Delta should be renamed Delayed
IT folks are eternal optimists, like Rajib 🙂
You mean self deluded… ☕️
I can promise you not all IT folks are optimists … I hold myself up as an example and Rajib can confirm 🙂 I am a pessimist through and through because I like pleasant surprises.
IT projects are run and estimates created with a consistent visible pattern.
Developers are incredibly optimistic about how soon the work can be done.
Managers are very pessimistic and fear developers pad in too much buffer
Sales is realistic. Neither of the estimates are material. The correct estimate is what the customer would like to hear 🙂
Your pilot could’ve been any of the three 🙂
Dhananjay, I need some more coffee to understand all that 🙂
I have experienced that same “paperwork” issue with Jet Blue. Two hours later you get the real story.
Anytime you hear 5-15 minute delay it is not to be trusted. They are called creeping delays and it is standard practice to put out a stock number when they really don’t know.
This is just one of many reasons why it is time to give up this palace and move to the next!