> In your experience, when a developer is assigned a task, how often do they fail? I know my own failure rate, but I'm curious what it is across the industry.
I guess it depends on how failure is defined.
If you're defining failure as "things take far longer than expected", then basically all of the time. And that's ok, because software development is different than building a house: there's no near-exact formula like you have in construction where you figure out the square footage of a wall to paint and can come up with a really good time estimate almost every time.
If you're defining failure as "we can't physically figure out any method to solve this technical problem even if we were given years to crack away at it" then I'd say not too common.
I guess it depends on how failure is defined.
If you're defining failure as "things take far longer than expected", then basically all of the time. And that's ok, because software development is different than building a house: there's no near-exact formula like you have in construction where you figure out the square footage of a wall to paint and can come up with a really good time estimate almost every time.
If you're defining failure as "we can't physically figure out any method to solve this technical problem even if we were given years to crack away at it" then I'd say not too common.