All Estimations Are Wrong, but None Are Useful

Summary

If you're working in a team using the Scrum framework, you use story points to estimate effort on your stories, tasks, etc. Some management also takes this into account and does planning, measures your productivity, and even keeps you accountable when something is done. Yet, they need to learn that software estimations are always wrong. The main reason is that estimations are forecasts, which are predictions of an unknown future. Yet we all know it is impossible to see the end, but people tend to forget this and make commitments based on estimations. It is generally good to have plans because they allow us to iteratively work on something, continuously providing value to our clients. Yet projects are usually very complex, involving many teams and dependencies between them. Why do plans fail? There are many reasons, such as not precise requirements, level of knowledge not being considered, the software needs to be underestimated, don't consider technical debt, etc.Yet, there are some other things why estimations fail:Hofstadter’s Law states, “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you consider Hofstadter's Law." It highlights the recursive nature of estimation, where considering the complexity of a task and human optimism often leads to underestimation.Brook’s Law states, "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." This law emphasizes the negative impact of increasing team size to speed up a project. New team members need time to get up to speed, and overhead communication increases, further delaying the project.Planning Fallacy: This cognitive bias causes people to underestimate the time and resources required to complete a task. In software estimation, developers may need to pay more attention to potential obstacles or be optimistic about their abilities, leading to inaccurate estimates.Bikeshedding: This law states that people focus on trivial details rather than critical aspects of a project. In software estimation, this can result in ...