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Discussion on: Estimation is not impossible

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Jon Lauridsen

Nice read, good insights. I see devs estimate on essential complexity but real develop time is massively dominated by accidental complexity, so estimations are inherently compromised.

J.B. Rainsberger touches on this in a wonderful ~7 minute lightning talk from 2013: t.co/wg1Rwt5qrw

When you suggest using past performance to inform estimates that really changes things, because it moves the estimation out of the realm of dev-theory and -feelings into the sharp uncompromising light of data. Estimations become less squishy, and the process is capable of learning, and those are gamechanging differences.

The best and simplest I've achieved was to record the start and end dates of stories, and then focusing the team on right-sizing all their stories to about an even level of complexity (that is: slice the stories as thinly as they can, but no thinner). That sets up a cadence of delivery that can be predicted quite well exclusively based on the completion metrics, so no planning-poker etc. is required. It's just a matter of doing the work and checking the "speedometer" to forecast future progress.

There are many ways to skin this particular cat and ultimately whatever works for a team and org. is fine, but I am deeply skeptical of participating in estimation-games that have no basis in data or ways of demonstrably self-improve.

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Jon Lauridsen

FWIW I also blogged about this topic here: dev.to/jonlauridsen/estimates-dont...