Sometimes the most honest estimate answer is “I don’t know.” That’s useful — but incomplete. Good estimates mix what you know and what you don’t. A common technique is to use relative comparisons (e.g. The estimate to build “Change Password” is about half of building “Login”), another technique is to use probability ranges (“between 5 to 15 days, most likely 12 days”). Both of these approaches can give managers, product owners, and stakeholders some meaningful information without pretending certainty.
Being honest about the uncertainty of the estimates let the team and the business manage the risk together.
We can use the Planning Game and Whole Team conversations to surface assumptions, reduce unknowns, and turn uncertainty into learnable experiments.
Estimations are about communication, not promises.
Discussions for your team
- How reliable is it to use task comparisons to help with estimations?
- Do we present probabilistic ranges when uncertain?
- Are there some experiments will can do to reduce estimation uncertainty?