Always been curious how “workload” is assigned and estimated for software engineers.
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This is an old school answer – I retired before so many of the methodologies mentioned here were in place. On large projects I worked on, people were assigned larger pieces and asked to estimate what it would take to do the work ( as opposed to current methods where small pieces are assigned and a team does a collaborative effort). Some people’s estimates were just awful, either because they wanted to look good at the start, wanted to fit in to what they thought others expected, or were just bad programmers. Some were spot on, within days on a year long project. Eventually, assuming a stable team, it became pretty clear how to weigh estimates. This was all product development, not time sensitive customer or contract work. [Warning: bitching ahead] Eventually, the whole industry changed, and specifically my company’s management changed and schedules became more important than quality. At that point, lots of those scheduling methodologies like “Agile” came in and just made the job harder. The bean counters, collaboration weenies, and micromanagers won and quality suffered. Glad I’m out.
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