Doug Bradbury, from 8th Light, wrote an article called ‘Oh, It’s Not That Hard‘ where he offers solid advice to developers who have faced the most common question posed by stakeholders:  ‘How hard would that be?’

The shotgun answer from most developers who haven’t been around the block a few times is, ‘Not that hard, I can do it.’  For those developers who have been around, you know that answer is just setting yourself up for a world of pain.  Most stakeholders don’t care or understand the work involved in delivering the end product – they just care if you can do it and the end result.

Doug provides a better answer to give if you are ever asked the question of how difficult something is to develop, ‘That change sounds like a very interesting and important one. Let’s create a story and then we’ll estimate it.’

Doug Bradbury’s article complements the post from Uncle Bob Martin about ‘Why Estimating is so Hard‘ perfectly.