Doing the Impossible
the art of predicting the future
An often asked question in software - and one which rarely gets a correct answer is simply, “When will this be done?” This is such a difficult question to answer that people like Woody Zuill tout No Estimates as a principle - and he’s not entirely wrong. Estimates are practicaly impossible - and often when teams are held accountable for educated guesses on delivery, it’s a short path to blame and padding. In fact, I’ve led no-estimates projects, and they went great…but there’s a challenge that I didn’t find a workaround for - stakeholders (dependent teams, leadership, etc.) want to know (fairly) when something is going to be done.
We need magic.
The Science of Magic
Over fifteen years ago, a team member introduced me to Douglas Hubbard’s How To Measure Anything, and it’s something I’ve re-read quite a bit over the years. Early in the book, he sums up my challenges succintly.
Management cares about measurements because measurements inform uncertain decisions
For any decision or set of decis…
