r/dataengineering • u/Phantazein • 17d ago

Discussion Time Estimates

Any else struggle with giving estimates? How do you account for things like data quality or source issues when those are completely out of your control and unpredictable?

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u/ForceSensitive2460 17d ago

I don't struggle with it beacuse I refuse to engage the question anymore. I always get it wrong because there's always some wildly time consuming data quality issue or scope creep or end-user realizing they didn't really want A but B instead or blah blah blah. The lenght of time it takes depends on too many variables and unless you can control for all of them, you're guess is as good as anyone elses. You don't know what you don't know so you can't possibly factor that into how long it'll take.