On the Scenario tab of any InnerWorkings challenge you will see a PostIt icon with the words “Estimated Coding Time 30 Minutes”. You’d be surprised how

much discussion this little indicator provokes. The intention behind it is simple - we want to let you know how much coding time you can expect to spend completing the task. And it is a pretty good measure - as I write this, the average coding time per task when calculated for all tasks in our catalog across our entire customer base is 29.7 minutes. (Thanks to Seamus Brady, our Head of Platform Infrastructure, for this data!)

The discussion arises because of a subtlety in its phrasing. It says “coding” time and that is what it means. It doesn’t try to take into account any other time you might spend on the task. We don’t try to prejudge the amount of time you might spend researching, reading or just thinking about the problem and its solution. This will vary from developer to developer, depending on your knowledge and on your experience level with the material you are working on.

One of the unintended consequences of this is that users sometimes feel under pressure to complete. It is common for us to get feedback indicating that it took much longer to complete the task than the 30 minutes indicated. There are a couple of things I would say about that:

1) That’s fine. This is a learning environment. Take as long as you need to learn. It is not intended to put you under pressure - merely to give you an indication of the amount of coding work involved.

2) Go back a couple of days after you have completed the task and do it again. See how long it takes you. Repeating the task solidifies the learning. This is a practice environment. The goal is to help you master application of the technique you are learning.

However, the feedback provokes a lot of discussion here in InnerWorkings. Opinions vary from changing the message to eliminating it altogether to variations in between. I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this.