It seems that no matter what my project is, I get through 80% of the work fairly fast. Users and management get excited thinking things are way ahead of schedule, but the pesky 20% of work remaining seems to take 4 times as long as the previous 80%. When we have our regular check ins or stand ups on the project, I feel like a broken record saying ‘yes things have gone OK so far, but there is still quite a bit left to do…’
For the most part, my estimates are fairly accurate, but I am human. What is the best approach for convincing users that the last 20% of work really does take 80% of the time? It seems like more and more users and management believe IT is easy and magic happens at the snap of some fingers…
In general, we do track tasks at what I believe to be a fairly low level. Not necessarily at a create label or textbox, but we are pretty detailed… We also track our estimate to completion on all tasks, which I feel is a more important number than the original estimate when you’re in the middle of the project.
I think it comes down to the perception of the users and management. Even though they may know the estimate to completion, they still get wrapped up in the emotions and perceptions on what they are seeing and the estimate numbers take a back seat. This is what I’m trying to figure out how to contain or manage expectations to.
EDIT
Turning into a community wiki as this is rather subjective. Should have been that way from the beginning.
But i digress.
The best practice is sadly experience. SCRUM methods have been very helpful for some types of software development since they constantly update the release date to a more accurate date. (quick video about scrum)