{"id":18293,"date":"2009-05-12T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2009\/05\/12\/microspeak-t-shirt-sizing\/"},"modified":"2009-05-12T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T10:00:00","slug":"microspeak-t-shirt-sizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20090512-00\/?p=18293","title":{"rendered":"Microspeak: T-shirt sizing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/larryosterman\/archive\/2007\/06\/01\/missed-metaphors.aspx\"> Larry Osterman discussed the buzzword <i>T-shirt sizing<\/i><\/a>, which means &#8220;making extremely rough estimates in terms of a small number of predefined categories.&#8221; The term comes from the traditional way T-shirt sizes are specified in the United States. Instead of having T-shirts in sizes 4, 5, 6 and so on, there are only a small number of sizes: Small, medium, large, and extra-large. (Sometimes augmented by extra-small, extra-extra-large, etc.)<\/p>\n<p> Forcing the estimate into one of a fixed set of sizes allows the process to go quickly while still producing a result that is at least within the same zip code as a more detailed answer. The idea is not to pin down the schedule precisely but rather to get a back-of-the-envelope feel for whether a project is a two-week project, a two-month project, or a two-year project. <\/p>\n<p> The size breakdowns vary depending on the scope of the project. For a small project, <i>small<\/i> might mean &#8220;less than a day&#8221;, whereas for a large project, <i>small<\/i> might mean &#8220;less than a week&#8221;. People can usually come up with a gut feeling as to whether something will take &#8220;less than a week&#8221; much more quickly than they can say whether something will take one day, two days, or three days. <\/p>\n<p> As the concept of <i>T-shirt sizing<\/i> spread through Microsoft, it inevitably became the source of a new set of derived jargon. I&#8217;ve seen <i>T-shirt costing<\/i> on a meeting agenda. Though thankfully I have yet to see <i>T-shirting<\/i>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Larry Osterman discussed the buzzword T-shirt sizing, which means &#8220;making extremely rough estimates in terms of a small number of predefined categories.&#8221; The term comes from the traditional way T-shirt sizes are specified in the United States. Instead of having T-shirts in sizes 4, 5, 6 and so on, there are only a small number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[105,26],"class_list":["post-18293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-microspeak","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Larry Osterman discussed the buzzword T-shirt sizing, which means &#8220;making extremely rough estimates in terms of a small number of predefined categories.&#8221; The term comes from the traditional way T-shirt sizes are specified in the United States. Instead of having T-shirts in sizes 4, 5, 6 and so on, there are only a small number [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}