Originally Posted by
MPN11
Is it not a Defence truism that everything takes twice as long and costs twice as much?
Sadly that experience never permeates down to the optimistic initial estimates
It's not just defense contracts - it permeates the industry. When we did our propulsion work statements for the 747-8, we found out later than someone higher up decided they were too high and unilaterally cut 30% (guess what, we busted the budget - by a bit more than the 30% they cut).
The KC-46 was even worse - when we were asked for work statements, we were told to 'assume success - give us a best case estimate' so we did (what could go wrong
). They came back to me and questioned my work statement. Discussion went something like this:
Prog: Why do you need so many hours for this?
Me: Because you chose to use a new xyz data base - we need to redefine everything.
P: But it's a simple task!
Me: Not according to the people who've used xyz.
P: They're wrong, we've made the tool better!
Me: Not according to the people who use it.
I'd put in 1000 hours to do xyz - they unilaterally cut it to 500. It took 2000