Midwest PHP 2018 Header

Jessica talked about what annotations are and how to convert those into estimates. Her talk revolved around a waterfall approach but I could see how you could integrate it into an Agile process.

Main Take Aways

  • Clients need a little help on what to expect
  • Websites for clients are like Christmas for kids. Clients don’t care about how it gets created they just care about the end result
  • Remember to include setup in estimate

Things I’m Going to Do

Try some tools for this.

I think it would be nice to include the level of detail in annotations she showed in her examples. I know for some of my client work it’s difficult to explain how this all works.

My Raw Notes

Annotation = what

Estimate = how

Technical annotations

  • Document what’s expected
  • Clients need a little help on what to expect
  • Too much information or too little (and misspelled) isn’t helpful
  • It’s important to remember your audience and find a middle ground between technical and non-technical
  • Websites for clients are like Christmas for kids. Clients don’t care about how it gets created they just care about the end result
  • As you do annotations make sure you explain who is responsible for what pieces
  • Ask up front where content exists and who needs to create it
  • Make sure you ask what the expectation is for aggregating content on a page
  • Remember to ask (and document) how long logs should be kept, where, and who should receive notifications
  • Important to document what happens when a buttons is pressed
  • When you build a site you should be up front about what you support.
  • Be clear if you’re going to support a vertical and horizontal view of screen and phone vs tablet
  • Make sure you document what was discussed and discarded (out of scope work)
    • Protects time lines and budget
    • For large projects
  • Are you going to be ADA compliant?
  • Tools for Annotations
    • Make sure you can collaborate
    • Make sure it’s exportable
    • Keep it simple

Estimations

  • Remember to include setup in estimate
  • Have a range in your estimate
  • Never estimate less than 30 minutes
  • Person doing work should do the estimate
  • It’s a good idea to help junior developers with estimates
  • In agile plan for larger range of high and low end of estimates
  • Ask more questions -> get more answer