Project Manager that wants to lock in time estimate with a signed contract
- by sunpech
At a previous employment, a project manager (PM) wasn't satisfied with the delivery time of the code on a project I was on. I was told by my project lead that that the PM was considering having me sign a contract to lock-in my time estimates I gave for tasks and delivery dates.
The situation on the project was that we were working with new technologies, codebase, coding standards, and very prone-to-change requirements. I was learning new things and applying them the best I could on requirements that kept on changing. The requirements throughout the iterations grew by 2-3 times, with my estimate-to-complete growing by roughly 5-8 times. The only things that didn't change were the estimates and delivery dates.
Yes, I did end up missing most deadlines. And I was working on some very new technologies that no one else on the entire development team could really help out on because they wouldn't be familiar with it. At least not easily.
It seemed to me then, that the PM wanted his numbers to add up-- and thus wanted me to sign a contract to "ensure" that I would always deliver working code on time. I suppose with a signed contract the PM could use it against me if I couldn't deliver on time.
I believe what happened next was that other project managers and/or project leads defended me, and didn't let this happen.
My question is, should this raise a red flag about the manager? Is it common practice for a manager to lock-in time estimates of a software developer with a signed contract? Or in this case, try to.
Please note, I was a full time employee, not an independent consultant.
Update:
I want to add that I did give new estimates weekly, but it seems the original estimates and delivery dates were what the PM was fixated on.
