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The best estimates I’ve found are “This will take: days, weeks, months, years”. No numeric values allowed. Yes, you can’t do (inherently faulty) math on these e
by teeray 2y ago
The best estimates I’ve found are “This will take: days, weeks, months, years”. No numeric values allowed. Yes, you can’t do (inherently faulty) math on these estimates to arrive at aggregate metrics: this is a feature. However, it still allows you to meaningfully schedule work.
- Dyac 2y agoIf pushed, I get my developers to give estimates in jumps of ~5x. Their options are 2 days 2 weeks 2 months 10 months Then I triple the estimates before sharing with the business. We don't estimate individual tickets/bugs at all, just overarching projects. I also ask the business to estimate the commercial/user impact of the projects too, and we track and report the reality against their estimate, to hold a bit of a mirror up to them and as a way of pushing back on doing pointless work. Those estimates we use similar orders of magnitude for - £1k, £10k, £100k, £1m, £10m. Fermi estimations like these really help avoid protracted negotiations and the lack of precision is a feature that makes clear they are estimated.