Master Story Teller

I’m not talking about estimation of user stories during planning using ‘planning poker’. I’m talking about the big picture estimation during feasibility (I prefer the term ‘contemplation).The boss says ‘good idea, how much is it going to cost?’ Is this question supposed to go away? ‘Listen boss, just trust me, we’ll get started and see how we go, and if we don’t make any progress, just cancel the project.’ Fine if that’s the kind of company you work for. I’ve never worked for anybody who ever thought like that. Perhaps that’s a pity, but it’s my experience. No, they want to know how much it is going to cost upfront and it doesn’t matter that it’s it’s a pile of hooey. Everybody knows the number has effectively been plucked out of the air, and somehow it becomes the budget, and everybody’s disappointed when the real project bears no relationship to the estimate. Odd, a number based on a guess is wrong – who would have thought it. But it is still the case that if that is what the accountant types want, that is what you have to give them. So, instead of a completely random guess, wouldn’t you prefer to base the guess on something so instead of a wild guess it was an educated (OK, an ‘informed’ guess). Yes it’s hard, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, nor does it mean we can ignore it. It just means it’s hard. But, it is possible to get better at hard things – that’s why people practice at things. Nothing worth doing is easy – remember that old saying. I hated it when my mother told me that – but that doesn’t make it wrong.

So it could be that your estimates are today an illusion – they represent an illusion of control. In reality the business would be happier if they could keep their illusions of control and they’d be a whole lot happier if the illusions became more concrete over time. OK, so to start with estimates are rubbish, but it is possible that if a reasonable process were defined, and refined iteratively, with a meaningful feedback loop from projects completed, we could get better at it. This doesn’t mean years of analysis, we’re past that, but why can’t we have an accurate representation of what we want without cluttering it all up with mis-leading precision?

Human history is littered with stuff we don’t know, then we figured it out, and then we realised it was just a question of us not knowing – yet.