4 ms·
> Businesses that can't do at least some basic form of cost-benefit analysis will likely end up going out of business under a series of projects that don't make
by artsrc 13y ago
> Businesses that can't do at least some basic form of cost-benefit analysis will likely end up going out of business under a series of projects that don't make financial sense.
You can't execute an estimate and make money with it, so they are waste in a lean sense of waste.
There are usually cheaper* ways of dealing with the problem than producing estimates.
Where I work now I don't think I have ever provided a written estimate (and no one else has) for my work.
Who does estimates for the time to produce all these estimates?
* Estimates have subtle costs and benefits apart from the time to produce them.
- wpietri 13y agoYes to all of this. In the Lean sense, estimates are necessary waste if you use them to make productive decisions. That is, if by wasting time on estimates you can avoid an even larger waste, you win. But otherwise, they're pure waste. And that's something I've seen quite a bit of. E.g., when estimates are used to give managers a sense of control. Which, in this case, means an opportunity to yell at people who fail to meet the estimates. Curiously, they almost always conclude the problem is a failure of execution, rather than over-optimistic estimates. And by "curiously", I mean "predictably."