So many bad dev habits...

But the one that results in the biggest headaches afterwards?

Me, when given a problem and being asked an estimated time: 'This shouldn't be too hard, gimme X to do it', only to later find out it's way harder than i imagined.

Oh man, I know that feel.

Half true, if I may take "our" defense.

1) people are much harsher with dev projects because of their intangibility. The construction of an airport terminal can be delayed 3 years but for some reason it's a massive deal my timeline is 5% off.

2) we can also deliver early, no one notices then...

3) the executive is rarely handed over projects with a lot of rubbish under the hood; everything is all neatly contained in an email thread => not the stuff we inherit (you call this documentation?!)

That being said, yes, I personally could do better estimating my time-frames.

I've read this comment somewhere.. I my memory serves me well it was on one of this year's commitstrip pics' comment section. Basically the guy said:

- we have a habbit here for estimations: we take the number in the initial estimation and double it. And then change units up by one level. This way if we estimate a change will take 3 hours it becomes 6 days, 4 days become 8 weeks and so on. Ever since we've adopted this technique we're never late with our estimates

-- some guy in commitstrip

I always do x times 3