The estimation abuse

Not you, of course, but John Doe was once asked to make an estimate by Jane Roe. He did, doubled it, and reported it back. Jane routinely halved it and used her organizational power to settle it. John Doe was pushed to accept. Eventually, it did not hold, and the blame game began.

You have seen the pattern many times and felt sorry, sometimes for John, sometimes for Jane. However, the real loser is always the project's performance.

Let's get a little philosophical for a moment to see if we can settle for a better practice that doesn't compromise John's professionalism and Janes's need for planning data. Maybe we are abusing the concept of an estimate.

Oxford Learnes Dictionary: An estimate - "a judgement that you make without having the exact details or figures about the size, amount, cost, etc. of something". The important part is the acceptance of the uncertainty that is an inherent part of an estimate. To deal with this uncertainty, it is the responsibility of project governance to establish the structures that can deal with the uncertainty most efficiently. Practices include: Minimizing the uncertainty. Ensure appropriate funding. Prepare the project for the challenge. None of these practices include: Faking the estimate, pushing engineers, fooling stakeholders, or blaming someone for what is nothing but an inherent property of an estimate: uncertainty.

We ask for an estimate, but what we really need is accurate data because our budgets and schedules are finite, and executives and finance need predictability and certainty.

However, when we can't get accurate data, the second best option is to get an estimate, which is fine as long as it is treated fairly.

It becomes abuse when the estimate transforms into an offer to a customer or any other act where the estimate becomes the target that someone is expecting to be met. From this point, engineers and planners are suboptimizing toward an unrealistic target and not toward the best performance, and the ripple effects are devastating. Both the business case and the humans involved suffer from estimation abuse. How can we stop this malpractice?

Responsibility: Project governance must eliminate all incentives to fake estimates.

Please contribute with your experience in the comments. What are the DOs and DON'Ts of treating estimates as estimates?