Why your project is always late — know your true supply hour
The original time was etimated for a Senior Data Scientist, a new update for Tech Lead have been added since becoming one in early 2022.
Project planning isn’t easy, especially if you are under pressure to deliver. But why do we always wildly underestimate the amount of time that is required to complete a project?
From the face of it, if our estimation is correct and there are no unexpected errors, then we should complete the project on time, right?? I recently completed a POC project, and frankly, I encountered no major obstacles. However, I was only able to deliver it after working overtime! So what’s the problem?
Luckily, I keep a diary of the work that I do and when I review it to see where I spend my time, I come to the following conclusion.
If you think you have a week to do it, you are really saying, I can do it in 2 days.
Everybody has a different schedule, and my schedule can be wildly different to yours, but I suggest that you try to record your calendar for a month and then review how your time is spent so you have a better idea of your true supply hour per week.
The following is a breakdown of my weekly calendar based on the diary of my last 2 companies. The number of days for each section is based on a 50 working hour week, 10 hours a day for 5 days excluding breaks.
Company/department-wide initiatives and commitments
These are meetings that everyone is invited to, whether it’s an all-hands, business review or awareness initiatives such as LGBTIQ day. These don’t happen often, but when they do, they can take your morning or afternoon away.
These can also include voluntary sessions such as lunch and learn or a business showcase closely related to your work.
Estimate: 0.5 days/5 hours a week — total: 0.5 days
Team commitments
We spend a lot of our time with our team, we share responsibilities, and we support each other to produce synergy.
Working in a team requires planning, review and allocation of human resources. This will generally include sprint planning, retros and action items, and 1-on-1s with your manager.
There are also tasks that rotate within a team, from preparing a brown bag session on the latest data science development to on-call rotations.
I love supporting my team, and although they do consume a significant amount of my time, I strongly believe they foster a better team environment and generate efficiency. Whether it is reviewing a PR or new proposal, collaborating in a brainstorming session or code pairing.
Estimate: 1 day/10 hours per week — total: 1.5 days
Secondary Tasks
We are rarely assigned a single project at any time. Things break, so we have to fix them; there are small tasks that the PM will assign to you because we think we can do it in an hour or follow-ups from the project that you just completed.
Estimate: 1 day/10 hours per week — total: 2.5 days
Communication:
This can be responding to an email or a message on Slack or spontaneous meeting with stakeholders or other collaborators to clarify an issue.
Estimate: 0.5 days/5 hours per week — total of 3 days
Summary
The commitment can change from week to week, you may spend more time or some while less on others.
But as you can see from the breakdown, once we have factored in all the necessary commitments, we are left with 2 days per week. So to avoid my mistake and avoid working overtime.
Know how much time you really have for your next project!
Update since becoming a tech lead:
Since becoming a tech lead early this year (2022), my responsibility has changed, and the following is an update to the distribution of my time.
Company/department-wide initiatives and commitments
There has been no change in this department.
Team commitments
Since becoming a tech lead, a significant amount of my time has been dedicated to improving the team's efficiency by designing better processes and also mentoring other data scientists on the team. This has led to 1 extra day of work/per week.
In addition, tech leads are expected to review work both internal to the team and also major initiatives that may impact our team. This varies and depends on the number of initiatives happening around the company. I would estimate this to be around about half a day a week.
Secondary Tasks
I have been able to delegate some of the more minor tasks to team members, this reduces my load by half a day.
Communication
Tech leads are responsible for the delivery of the project, we need to communicate our plan and ensure updates are made in a timely fashion so the stakeholders and PM are well informed.
I typically spend on average about half a day gathering status of team, meeting with PM/stakeholders to understand new requirements and making bi-weekly updates to the relevant stakeholders.
An additional half a day is spent coordinating with other tech leads and engineering managers to align our milestones and coordinate our plans when changes occur.
From the updated time, I now have zero days left for any project and unfortunately overtime is expected.
This has been rather common from the tech leads that I spoke with and the books I read. The tech lead role has more management responsibility, but at the same time, you are expected to code at the same level, so unfortunately over time is expected.
