5 ms·

I don't doubt that estimations are useful, but you don't necessarily need to provide an estimation. Why not just say, "I'll need to look into the impact of that

I don't doubt that estimations are useful, but you don't necessarily need to provide an estimation. Why not just say, "I'll need to look into the impact of that change and I can get back to you". What are you gaining by introducing an opportunity for your head math to be wrong? You can still keep the conversation velocity by committing to providing an estimate later, especially a more accurate one. You might be making a careless error because you're doing the math during a meeting.

Jensson 5y ago
That is good in theory but most people will have forgotten most of the conversation by the time you get back to them with your calculated values. People don't care that much about what others do, in order to grab their attention you need to be well prepared and answer things quickly or you lose them.
MathCodeLove 5y ago
It's not quite that binary. There are times where your approach is the best one, likely more times than not. But there are also situations in which it'd be advantageous to provide some concrete figure/estimate in the moment, even if its not completely accurate.
gowld 5y ago
> You can still keep the conversation velocity by committing to providing an estimate later, conversation velocity, yes, but not project velocity, which is much more important.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Why not just say, "I'll need to look into the impact of that change and I can get back to you". When you say that, do you then end the conversation about the change. Or do you keep on taking about the specifics of the change. If you keep on talking, and the change turns out to be infeasible, then you just wasted a bunch of time. However, if you stop talking and the change turns out to be feasible, you just wasted time that you and the other person had set aside.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I find it infuriating when people can’t come up with a ballpark number. You can and should check the numbers later but don’t stop a discussion.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  A lot of people have the unfortunate experience of being pressed for estimates and guesses only to be held to them as though they were 100% certain, and possibly punished for being wrong.
  - kragen 5y ago
    I think a "ballpark estimate" here means "between one hour and one month", not "between two and four days". That's more like second base than the ballpark. Ballpark estimates for software tasks are useful in situations like https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/: before ImageNet, determining whether a photo contained a bird really would have been a multi-year research project with uncertain success, while determining if EXIF places a photo within a national park was a relatively simple GIS query. But this is not obvious to muggle stakeholders. Of course, for things like bug fixes, scientific discoveries, and market research, often even estimation of that level of precision is unavailable. It's true that that can be infuriating, but that's just the way it is. Will this new model sell to a thousand customers or a billion? You can't tell in advance. Will this bug take five minutes or five months of effort to fix? You can't tell until you find the cause. When will we discover the next new class of antibiotics? It may already have happened or it may take a century.
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      “Will this new model sell to a thousand customers or a billion? You can't tell in advance.” Very often you can know if it has a chance to be in the thousands or billions just by looking at the market size. Or you can estimate a possible size of installed base by looking at how many companies may be using your stuff.
      - 5y ago

Jensson 5y ago

That is good in theory but most people will have forgotten most of the conversation by the time you get back to them with your calculated values. People don't care that much about what others do, in order to grab their attention you need to be well prepared and answer things quickly or you lose them.

MathCodeLove 5y ago

It's not quite that binary. There are times where your approach is the best one, likely more times than not. But there are also situations in which it'd be advantageous to provide some concrete figure/estimate in the moment, even if its not completely accurate.

gowld 5y ago

> You can still keep the conversation velocity by committing to providing an estimate later, conversation velocity, yes, but not project velocity, which is much more important.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Why not just say, "I'll need to look into the impact of that change and I can get back to you". When you say that, do you then end the conversation about the change. Or do you keep on taking about the specifics of the change. If you keep on talking, and the change turns out to be infeasible, then you just wasted a bunch of time. However, if you stop talking and the change turns out to be feasible, you just wasted time that you and the other person had set aside.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I find it infuriating when people can’t come up with a ballpark number. You can and should check the numbers later but don’t stop a discussion.

mkr-hn 5y ago
A lot of people have the unfortunate experience of being pressed for estimates and guesses only to be held to them as though they were 100% certain, and possibly punished for being wrong.
- kragen 5y ago
  I think a "ballpark estimate" here means "between one hour and one month", not "between two and four days". That's more like second base than the ballpark. Ballpark estimates for software tasks are useful in situations like https://xkcd.com/1425/ https://xkcd.com/1425/: before ImageNet, determining whether a photo contained a bird really would have been a multi-year research project with uncertain success, while determining if EXIF places a photo within a national park was a relatively simple GIS query. But this is not obvious to muggle stakeholders. Of course, for things like bug fixes, scientific discoveries, and market research, often even estimation of that level of precision is unavailable. It's true that that can be infuriating, but that's just the way it is. Will this new model sell to a thousand customers or a billion? You can't tell in advance. Will this bug take five minutes or five months of effort to fix? You can't tell until you find the cause. When will we discover the next new class of antibiotics? It may already have happened or it may take a century.
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    “Will this new model sell to a thousand customers or a billion? You can't tell in advance.” Very often you can know if it has a chance to be in the thousands or billions just by looking at the market size. Or you can estimate a possible size of installed base by looking at how many companies may be using your stuff.
    - 5y ago