In your software development efforts, would you eliminate estimates* if you found they bring no value?\u00a0Put another way, if it costs (time, money, effort, whatever) to do estimates, and you get no return for that expense AT ALL, would you still do those estimates?<\/p>\n
I’ve asked this question to about 50 people (face-to-face,\u00a0in conference sessions, in “Skype” conversations, and in other forums) and here are some of the typical things I hear in response (note that these “answers” don’t answer the question at all):<\/p>\n
I rarely hear the answer I originally thought I would hear:<\/p>\n
Same question (more or less) without the word “estimates”: If waste is anything that has a cost but has no value, would you eliminate waste from your process were you\u00a0to find it?<\/p>\n
Most of the time the answer I hear\u00a0to this is “You bet I would”.<\/p>\n
It seems to me, for the time being anyway, that there is some sort of problem people have when I insert “estimates” into the conversation.<\/p>\n
Why are few willing to actually answer the question, and instead “dodge it”?\u00a0\u00a0I don’t know.\u00a0 I might be asking it wrong.<\/p>\n
I pose hypothetical questions to myself all the time.\u00a0 One of my favorite “thinking tools” is to take the opposite side of\u00a0some belief I have. For example: I love pair programming.\u00a0 It feels right, helps me work faster and stay on track, accelerates my learning, gives me confidence in my code, things like that.\u00a0 So, I will challenge myself and ask: What\u00a0if I’m wrong? What if\u00a0pair programming is a wasteful practice? How could I prove that? What would I do if I did\u00a0 prove it?<\/p>\n
Exploration of questions like these help me grow my ability to do continuous improvement.\u00a0At least it feels that way to me.<\/p>\n
I am always on the alert for waste. It comes in many forms, yet it is often hidden, or disguised as something of value. It’s fun, interesting, exciting even, to find and eliminate waste.\u00a0 And, it is just plain good business.\u00a0\u00a0A penny saved is ten cents earned.\u00a0 If you don’t understand how that works, I’ll explain it some other time.<\/p>\n
I find it helpful to remember\u00a0the old Einstein saying about insanity, which I paraphrase here:\u00a0We keep doing this, it\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0seem to work, we need to do better next time, we try to do better, things never get better.\u00a0Perhaps “getting better at this” is\u00a0failing, and “this” is not the right thing to do at all.<\/p>\n
Once I’ve opened my eyes to the possibilities, I usually find big improvements are going to start happening.\u00a0\u00a0The old thinking and old practices\u00a0that\u00a0have been blocking me from “better” are gone, and\u00a0I can allow myself to imagine the possibilities, and to\u00a0start innovating.<\/p>\n
So here is what I ask: Think of it like debate class.<\/p>\n
The proposition: “Estimates are waste and we must eliminate estimates in software development”.<\/p>\n
Take the affirmative position supporting the proposition, and prepare your arguments.\u00a0 Suggest ways you could prove that estimates\u00a0are a waste.\u00a0Propose how you could replace estimates\u00a0in your process.\u00a0 Imagine\u00a0you could convince your\u00a0customer\u00a0to hire your company without a bidding process – perhaps something more like choosing a doctor than buying a car.\u00a0 Stuff like that.<\/p>\n
We won’t really debate – this is just an exercise.\u00a0 Are you willing to stretch your thinking a bit?\u00a0 It shouldn’t take long. And you can quit any time and watch TV instead.<\/p>\n
NOTES:<\/p>\n
* For the purpose of this article, the sort of estimates I am discussing are the estimates typically asked for on many software development projects where a project, a feature, or a function, or a bug fix (or where a list of features or functions) are described and people are asked to come up with an approximate cost in time, money, or effort to do the work that will be required to provide the feature(s)\/function(s)\/capability(ies)\/bug fix(es) being requested.<\/p>\n
Disclaimer: There are many situations where estimates can be meaningful and useful. \u00a0This article is about situations where I don’t think they are typically meaningful or useful, and only in the realm of software development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think this is a simple question: In your software development efforts, would you eliminate estimates* if you found they bring no value?\u00a0Put another way, if it costs (time, money, effort, whatever) to do estimates, and you get no return for that expense AT ALL, would you still do those estimates? Few Are Willing To […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,21,22,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agile-stuff","category-estimating","category-no-estimating","category-noestimates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions\/1035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zuill.us\/WoodyZuill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}