The Development Iceberg

When someone asks "how long will this take?", most people only picture the part above the water.

What actually goes into a feature

waterline Writing the Code 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The small tip above the waterline is what most estimates account for. Everything numbered below it also has to happen — and together it's the bigger half of the work.

1Ticket description
2Local verification
3Automated tests
4Engineering docs
5Deployed verification
6Git cleanup
7Pull request write-up
8Context shifting while waiting
9Final push to production
Skip any of these and the work doesn't disappear — it just shows up later as a surprise, unbudgeted and unplanned.