Show this to your manager when asked to estimate delivery dates. And ask if your business is actually profitable.
This is master class from a manager in a profitable business (time mark 3 min 40 sec): https://youtube.com/watch?v=NTLk53h7u_k&t=3m40s
Show this to your manager when asked to estimate delivery dates. And ask if your business is actually profitable.
This is master class from a manager in a profitable business (time mark 3 min 40 sec): https://youtube.com/watch?v=NTLk53h7u_k&t=3m40s
Guerre en #Ukraine : "Plusieurs centaines de milliers", encore plus élevé que les #estimations #occidentales… le nombre de pertes #russes dévoilé par erreur par un #conseiller de #Poutine
www.lindependant.fr/2025/05/23/g...
Guerre en Ukraine : "Plusieurs...
Guerre en #Ukraine : "Plusieurs centaines de milliers", encore plus élevé que les #estimations #occidentales… le nombre de pertes #russes dévoilé par erreur par un #conseiller de #Poutine
Peer: Can you do it in 4 months if I gave you 5 engineers?
Me: Now that we are haggling over Okra, can you sell me eggs at $1 a dozen?
Peer: Let's go talk to our CEO. He needs to know
Me: Sure. Even if you bring Donald Trump in the room, my answer will not change
#Softwareengineering #CPQ #Estimations
Conversation with a peer today
Peer: We have a new RFQ to write
Me: About?
Peer: CPQ
Me: Ok. I looked at the videos and requirements you sent me
Peer: And?
Me: 6 months minimum
Peer: That's too much. This has to be finished in 2 months
Me: Nope!!! Even if you clone me into 5 people it will not happen. With the shitty engineers we have, I'd say a year
#Softwareengineering #CPQ #Estimations
🎉BREAKING NEWS: Milan discovers the shocking truth that #estimations are wrong—because apparently, tech teams have been oblivious to this for years! 🙄 Meanwhile, managers are left scratching their heads wondering why their spreadsheets aren't psychic. 📉🔮
https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/all-estimations-are-wrong-but-none #breakingnews #techteams #managementissues #dataanalysis #HackerNews #ngated
All Estimations Are Wrong, but None Are Useful
https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/all-estimations-are-wrong-but-none
#HackerNews #All #Estimations #Are #Wrong #but #None #Are #Useful #Estimations #Accuracy #Project #Management #Tech #Insights
Now, #estimations are largely meaningless. What could we do instead?
Instead of dabbling in fortune telling (which as I said is what estimations are) we can instead decide how much time we’re willing to invest. It represents an upper boundary of time and therefore an upper boundary of how complex the solution may be. Shorter timeframe = less bells and whistles.
”ShapeUp” (a process framework by a company who shall not be named because they're tech bros, the bad kind) calls this "Appetite" but at the end of the day the name doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s meaningful (”this much time is what it’s worth to us”) and useful (”we can only do so much in that time”).
The problem with “Appetite” is that people aren’t used to it. It requires a change in how engineers think (and it requires them to actually think). But compared to #estimates it has at least the potential to be useful.
#SoftwareEngineering #Planning #Tech #TechLeadership #TechMyths #Bullshit
Everyone wants meaningful #estimations. Rarely are estimations meaningful. Estimations become more meaningful the further along the delivery one is. Early it’s a crapshoot and usually wrong. Estimations and fortune telling have more in common than you might expect.
So sure, we can do estimations. The questions are: when and with which level of information? How much confidence do you want in estimations? And let's ignore non-answers such as “as high as possible” because then the answer is that we do an estimation in the last week of delivery because that’s when confidence is the highest.
For me personally "meaningful" begins after technical planning. That is when the team sat down and actually planned out the work. It’s still _imagined work_ at that point - so dragons are still abundant - but it’s a good enough basis to give an educated guesstimate. Before that it’s reading tea leaves. Of course we can do it earlier but then the range (best vs worst case) will vary wildly. If that’s meaningful enough, great. If not, then that’s shit but nothing we can really do about it, unless someone on the team has a working crystal ball stashed away.
Estimations are one of these things were people love to confidently give wrong answers. It’s a self-perpetuating myth that’s largely done because it was always done and because it gives the illusion of control. Maybe that’s good enough? The illusion?
#SoftwareEngineering #Planning #Tech #TechLeadership #TechMyths #Bullshit
Accurate estimations are hard.
But here's the good news:
It doesn't have to be accurate!
Actually, the more you think about it, the more you tend to underestimate, because you start to get overconfident.
Go with your gut feeling, then triple it.
It's remarkably accurate! And it's lightning fast too!
Then, with a little luck you can even surprise everybody by finishing before time 😎
#estimations are nothing else then a model. And we all know that all models are wrong, but some are useful. For estimations apply the same: all of them are wrong, but some are useful?
Why wrong? because they are only estimations.
Why useful? because we need them.
But read yourself https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/project-estimates/ 🤓
By Vadim Kravcenko
'Non-Asymptotic Guarantees for Robust Statistical Learning under Infinite Variance Assumption', by Lihu Xu, Fang Yao, Qiuran Yao, Huiming Zhang.
http://jmlr.org/papers/v24/22-0034.html
#estimators #estimator #estimations
Know The Development Costs: Why Product Managers Need to Go Beyond Sprint Estimates and Story… https://link.medium.com/gETONBp2Xxb #productmanagement #estimations #ProductManager
I have been #writing an article about #estimations. But it became so big that I decided to change it to a serie of articles. And too make it worse these articles also require very exact wording. I kinda want to put it on hold and work on article that is easier to work on. #tired or #lazy?
@Tris "It is estimated that currently approximately 0.0% of all HTTP-aware intermediaries gracefully handle HTJP traffic." (RFC 8565). #statistiques #estimations #chiffres
Ne jamais oublier les predicats lorsque l' On fait des #estimations #statistiques.
"How to estimate a population using statisticians
Thanks so much to the Royal Statistics Society, and Jen Rogers in particular"
What's so great about #estimations? Here is the answer along with estimation tips #backoftheenvelope https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-better-at-back-of-the-envelope-calculations/