Chris Roane has a new post to his blog today talking about a quality he sees as one of the more valuable in PHP developers - leadership. He suggests, though, that if it's not there from the start, it can be learned.

Until recently, I thought leadership was a gift that you either had or did not have. I still believe it is something you can learn and get better at, but I'm now realizing that leadership is something we all have to some capacity. In fact, to be a successful PHP programmer, you have to be a good leader.

He relates it back to you being the "leader" of your own life, you being the one to make the decisions outside of the office too. This can translate back into your work in things like his example - making accurate estimates of development times and how much work it would take to make that happen.

This type of PHP programmer is valuable because they do not need someone constantly babysitting them. They can be trusted and people can depend on them confidently. If you are a manager, these are the people you want to manage because they will make you look good.

On the Ibuildings blog today there's a new article that looks at some best practices when it comes to estimating the time you can tell the customer a "more correct" timeline for when things will be ready.

Our estimating team spent two months thinking and discussing how software companies create estimates; we discussed what works and what doesn't. While the final document itself, along with the accompanying workbook, are available internally only, some of what was learned about the meta process of estimating may be interesting to others. Here are four Best Practices that came out of the process that we want to share with everyone.

He looks at "rightsizing" your estimations to fit the project, using only qualified people and constantly monitor your estimates and those doing the estimates (to ensure things are progressing as they should).

The estimate is what it is; if the amount is too high for the customer to accept then the price per hour can be adjusted or the feature set can be reduced. The number of hours that the project will take, however, should never be arbitrarily adjusted simply to meet a client's budget.