#NoEstimates – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly…

What Is #NoEstimates?

#NoEstimates is the attitude of reducing focus on estimating, committing to, and hitting estimates.

Woody Zuill, @WoodyZuill, recognized as a leading #NoEstimates provocateur, defines it as, “#NoEstimates is a hashtag for the topic of exploring alternatives to estimates for making decisions in software development.  That is, ways to make decisions with ‘No Estimates’.“

Henri Karhatsu, @karhatsu, http://blog.karhatsu.com says, “The purpose is not to refuse to estimate. #NoEstimates may be developer-driven but it is not a developers’ conspiracy to avoid doing estimates just because doing estimates doesn’t feel nice.”

After considerable reading and thinking about #NoEstimates, we have come down solidly on both sides.

This post discusses our experience with #NoEstimates, and when it may or may not be appropriate and why.

Our Experience with #NoEstimates and Reduced Estimates

Early in my career, as a newly promoted supervisor of a group of developers, I noticed that we were really bad at estimating new things.  The rote work was fairly easy to estimate as I had a lot of control over the group.  So, normally the developers were rarely interrupted and had one and only one task open at a time. I did not encourage nor allow, if I could catch them, multitasking or rapid task switching.  When I assigned a task, unless a senior manager was freaking out and forced a rare interruption, that person worked that task until

• They became blocked and needed help.
• They finished.
• I decided to coach them through what was looking to be an unfortunate situation.

All the groups I was around spent a great deal of time arguing about estimates. Management applied pressure to reduce estimates almost all the time, whether or not that pressure made things worse by encouraging

• Taking shortcuts that would come back up later. The cool new Agile term for this is “incurring technical debt.”
• Performing heroic actions like working all night.
• Padding estimates so that when management cut them in half they still had enough time.

In our consulting practice, we frequently find many of our clients are caught up in a sort of political merry go ‘round where

• Each manager or project manager is forced to make impassioned pleas for resources, sometimes daily, several times a week, or weekly. This is a waste of time.
• Team members are forced to scramble between tasks as attention shifts their way. This is a waste of time.
• Blamestorming Meetings are held to “find out how you could let this project come in late” even though focus and effort has shifted many times during the project. This is a waste of time.
• Each manager or project manager constantly pings team members on “how is my project progressing” or “are you going to make the deadline,” which applies political pressure on each team member. This is a waste of time.
• Estimates are asked for, rejected as too long, asked for again, rejected again, then finally accepted at 66-20% of the original estimate. This is a waste of time.
• My unofficial estimate of how much time this wasted effort can take is 15-45% of managers’, project managers’, and sometimes even team members’ time.
• Are you sensing a pattern?

Estimating is like any other method, you should only do it when the ROI is high enough to beat out all other work you could be doing.  This includes the worth to the organization, not just the worth to the team member.  If your estimation process has become negative to the extent you feel it is causing adverse motivation in any of your staff, give us a call or email Info@DataAnalysis.com and we can help you get back in control without wasting time.

When #NoEstimates May Be Appropriate

#NoEstimates types of methods can be appropriate when

• You simply don’t know what you are doing so your estimate could be way off. This happens if
  • This is a truly new type of work.
  • Your team has never done this type of work before.
• You are not in control of your time. This is incredibly common when
  • Your manager may ask you to abandon your current task anytime for an unknown amount of time.
  • Your job, such as Technical Support, a form of Operations, pulls you away from your project work.
• Work is small and sometimes the effort to estimate costs more than the work.

When #NoEstimates May Not Be Appropriate

#NoEstimates types of methods may not be appropriate when

• You know what you are doing so your estimate could be very good. This happens if
  • This is a common type of work.
  • Your team is familiar with this type of work.
  • You have actuals for prior performance.
• You are in control of your time
  • Your manager, as I did, gives you a task and expects you to stick to it.
  • Your job allows committing to one or a small number of tasks at a time.
• Work is large and material enough to be a line item on someone’s budget.
• A reasonably accurate estimate is needed to either
  • Decide to fund and undertake the work as in answering an RFP.
  • Decide to prioritize based on ROI = Benefit – Cost or similar formula.

If it is simply your governance model to estimate, do so in the fastest way possible and skirt the political discussions.  The more you focus on work, the more work you get done. If your senior managers see this, they will likely not drive too much toward useless time spent haggling.

#NoEstimates – Your Thoughts?

Let’s hear some of the situations you have been in that would or would not have benefited from a lesser focus on estimates.  Also if you have experimented with #NoEstimates how did that work for you? We will add the best ones to our best practices!  Good luck and keep focus on the quiet ones.  They may get you in the end!

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