The most frequently questioned answer in I.T.

The post on “the two most frequently asked questions in I.T.” gets a fair bit of traffic and is worth following up with an easy suggestion to try:

If the most frequently asked question in I.T. is “How long will it take?” Then why not be proactive and post estimated or actual timeframes whenever you implement an app? Post your times to lists, forums, and newsgroups. Tell authors to post it next to the download link. Realistic timeframes. For installing and implementing every article, every component, every question on every public forum. “It took an hour.” “It took a day.” “It wasted three months of my life.”

For me it means finding out how long it takes the average person to install and implement GenericDB (with worst/median/best results to be posted at the site). Or asking for feedback on how long it took to try any of the code I've blogged on. Sites like ASPAlliance, GotDotNet, or MSDN could set an example and start posting timeframes as well. One hell of a lot more useful than “16072 bytes.”

Can you think of somewhere you could go to right now to post an installation and/or implementation time? How about it?