What a work-week

This week was a very untypical week. Just back from a one-week vacation, I was faced with the opportunity to work on two projects in parallel. I was continuing my commitment to the big ongoing project I am working on and I was also asked to enhance the little surprise project that I did a few months ago. When I had to make an estimation, I gave a 8 workdays figure.

This week I was having 2 hours overtime each day and now I am spending the Saturday at the work place. The good thing is that the job is almost done. The funny thing is obviously that it got done for 8x2 hours instead of 8x8 hours. Am I such a bad estimator or was I overly cautious about unexpected difficulties (well,  they happen in nearly every single project). I guess when you work on your own code only, when the tools are right, when you understand your objectives and the client is responsive and well-meaning, when you are motivated to make it work, it doesn't take that much time.

Generally I don't like doing overtime. And no, that's not because the Pope says its wrong - it just feels wrong at the end of the day, or at the end of the week. Hopefully at my job this doesn't happen often, so I can live with it. But if I decide to do it, I find it helpful to shift my focus on how I am making the lives of the project stakeholders better (the client and my boss) and about the opportunity to entertain myself switching tasks and last but not least the financial rewards. And finally it gives me a topic to write about and clear the cobwebs from my blog and to test the wonderful Windows Live Writer :)