Underestimation is Underestimated (a.k.a. Overestimation is Overestimated)

Sometimes it seems like we have an underestimation gene embedded really deep in our cognition but for some “obvious” reason (e.g. underestimation! :) most manager will rather “fight” overestimation and *not* underestimation.

Disclaimer: I have originally estimated this post will take ~33 min but it took me ~240% more time… (this is why I prefer to tweet lately ;)

Six annoying facts about our (/homo sapiens) planning or estimation “skills”:

• We are basically optimistic and have strong desire to please
• We tend to have incomplete recall of previous experience
• We tend to have focus bias when estimating e.g. estimating only the coding phase estimations which is only ~14-37% of the required work
• We tend to postpone what we can a.k.a. “The Student Syndrome”  (Eliyahu M. Goldratt, Critical Chain)
• “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law” (Douglas Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid)
• We tend to underestimate task completion times – a.k.a. The planning fallacy

Overestimation is Overestimated

“The developers say that this project will take 6 months… I think there’s some padding in their estimates and some fat that can be squeezed out of them…we also need to instill a sense of urgency in the development team… so I’m going to insist on a 3-month schedule. I don’t really believe the project can be completed in 3 months, but that’s what I’m going to present to the developers. If I’m right, the developers might deliver in 4 or 5 months. Worst case, the developers will deliver in the 6 months they originally estimated” (Does this ring *any* bell???)

Four reasons on managers tendency to “fight” overestimations:

• Underestimation (see above :) | “The feature estimation seems bloated” | “Isn’t it 20 min work?” | “Just add another index to the %$^&ing table?” | “It is only one more button…”
• Unreasonable time constraint | “We need this feature yesterday” | “Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself” (A. H. Weiler)
• True belief that Parkinson’s “Law” is really a law – “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”
• “The Student Syndrome”  (see above)

So… if feature estimation seems bloated, managers and other project stakeholders fear that Parkinson’s Law and the Student Syndrome would kick in and therefore consciously squeeze the estimates to try to control it (a.k.a. “The Parkinson’s Squeeze”) and when we squeeze where it isn’t needed or was squeezed already, it immediately lead to… UNDERESTIMATION (!!!)

Underestimation is Underestimated

Underestimation creates numerous problems – some obvious, some not so obvious.

• Reduced effectiveness of project plans – Low estimates undermine effective planning by feeding bad assumptions into plans for specific activities. They can cause planning errors in the team size, such as planning to use a team that’s smaller than it should be. They can undermine the ability to coordinate among groups – if the groups aren’t ready when they said they would be, other groups won’t be able to integrate with their work. If the estimation errors caused the plans to be off by only 5% or 10%, those errors wouldn’t cause any significant problems but numerous studies have found that software estimates are often inaccurate by 100% or more (see above). When the planning assumptions are wrong by this magnitude, the average project’s plans are based on assumptions that are so far off that the plans are virtually useless.
• Statistically reduced chance of on-time completion – Developers typically estimate 20% to 30% lower than their actual effort. Merely using their normal estimates makes the project plans optimistic. Reducing their estimates even further simply reduces the chances of on-time completion even more.
• Poor technical foundation leads to worse-than-nominal results. A low estimate can cause you to spend too little time on upstream activities such as requirements and design. If you don’t put enough focus on requirements and design, you’ll get to redo your requirements and redo your design later in the project – at greater cost than if you’d done those activities well in the first place. This ultimately makes your project take much longer than it would have taken with an accurate estimate.
• Destructive late-project dynamics make the project worse than nominal Once a project gets into “late” status, project teams engage in numerous activities that they don’t need to engage in during an “on-time” project… below are some examples when the important characteristic of each of these activities is that they don’t need to occur at all when a project is meeting its goals, these extra activities drain time away from productive work on the project and make it take longer than it would if it were estimated and planned accurately
  • More status meetings with upper management to discuss how to get the project back on track
  • Frequent re-estimation, late in the project, to determine just when the project will be completed.
  • Apologizing to key customers for missing delivery dates (including attending meetings with those customers).
  • Preparing interim releases to support customer demos, trade shows, and so on. If the software were ready on time, the software itself could be used, and no interim release would be necessary.
  • More discussions about which requirements absolutely must be added because the project has been underway so long.
  • Fixing problems arising from quick and dirty workarounds that were implemented earlier in response to the schedule pressure.

Tip of the day
Never intentionally underestimate. The penalty for underestimation is more severe than the penalty for overestimation. Address concerns about overestimation through control, tracking and *mentoring* but not by bias.

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More related posts (a.k.a. people who read this post also read these posts)

• Software projects anxiety
• The Stockdale Paradox the Pessimistic Developer paradigm
• In Broken Images
• The Dunning Kruger Effect
• The Cone of Uncertainty in Pastel

“The further a project progressed, the more accurate the estimates for the remaining effort and time became”

Make sense?
 

I have found this “old” movie we made back in 2002 during my work at Mercury to “educate” new employees on our code review procedure.

p.s. Raz Yalov was nominated for best supporting actor that year ;)

Enjoy…

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I have also copy-pasted the presentation transcript below…

• The Golden Rules of Code Review
  • Do a self-review first
  • Stick to the requirements
  • If you need to explain it, document it!
  • It’s about the code – not about you!
  • Unit testing
• Do a self-review first
  • Have you checked all extreme cases?
  • Is your solution KISS?
  • Is your code self-explanatory?
  • Check it as if it was written by someone else
  • Ask yourself the questions you think you are about to be asked…
• Keep It Simple Stupid…
• Stick to the requirements
  • Make sure all aspects of the requirements are filled
  • Make sure you have tested both trivial and extreme cases
  • Document all thoughts and limitations in the code
  • Reference the requirements documents from your code
  • I18N – make sure the code supports multilingual capability where needed
• Documentation
  • Document your files and your functions
  • Give informative comments
  • Explain the logic behind your decisions
  • If you did something that is not logical or intuitive, explain why
  • If you learned historical info while learning the code, document it (be creative :)
  • Follow a standard documentation format
  • When possible, use known design patterns and document the design pattern you chose
• Unit Testing
  • Make sure your unit test is part of the change
  • If you can’t automate the test, check-in a manual procedure to run it
  • Make sure all aspects of the requirements are covered by the tests
  • Document all the tests you wanted to do but couldn’t
  • Test the I18N behavior of your code
• The Code Review Life Cycle
  • “Self-review” your code
  • Schedule a code review
  • Schedule enough time for both people involved
  • When possible, schedule for a time during the morning
  • Split the review into a few sessions, if needed
  • Switch your mind to “listener” mode
  • Write down all comments
  • After the code review is done, apply the necessary fixes and schedule a second review if needed
  • Check-in your changes
• Code Review Tips
  • When you program, remember the last code review
  • If you disagree with the reviewer, invite a 3rd person to review and decide
  • In special cases, invite special guests to review your code
  • When change is small/simple/intuitive, do an “e-review” by mailing your change to the reviewer(s)
  • When self-reviewing, fix mistakes on the spot… :)

“imagine that your mother-in-law believed her daughter could do better… and then imagine that she moved in with you… that’s what Scrum is like”

Think about it…

Assuming we shouldn’t aim to completely avoid all errors in software development (since this is an inherent part of any human creation) but rather to spot them as quickly as possible before they become real problems.

And… since Scrum is indeed a very good “tool” to bring the problems in-your-face without any mercy in a daily manner.

So without even getting into the continuous improvement possibilities with mother-in-laws, I really liked the Mother-In-Law allegory :)

By the way, with great anticipation I have proudly joined the Haiku contest @ the famous Ktorium – Wish me luck! :)

Jerry Madden retired from NASA in 1995 as Associate Director of Flight Projects at Goddard Space Flight Center.
During his distinguished 37-year career, he have collected more than 100 observations about project management

IMHO, these are the best three:

(#14) Never ask management to make a decision that you can make. Assume you have the authority to make decisions unless you know there is a document that states unequivocally that you cannot.

// I have deleted the last part since I really think that people should strive to make decisions even if there is a document that states that you can’t…

(#16) Never make excuses; instead, present plans of actions to be taken

// IMHO, NO Results with a GOOD excuse will never even resemble Results

(#59) Running does not take the place of thinking. For yourself, you must take time to smell the roses. For your work, you must take time to understand the consequences of your actions.

//You better THINK!

When “The Moscow Cats Theater” came to New York, the Russian clown Yuri Kuklachev was interviewed:  “the secret of training them is realizing that you can’t force cats to do anything [...] If the cat likes to sit you can’t force her to do anything else [...] Each cat likes to do her own trick [...] Maruska is the only one who does the handstand. I find the cat and see what they like to do and use that in the show [...] I have a cat now that loves to be in the water…”

– REUTERS, 2006

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Personally, I think that managing engineers is much more complicated than herding cats (although I didn’t have the twisted pleasure to herd a cat yet)

When you go out of your way to hire the best people around than soon enough you will find yourself herding a superior, class A, hyper-developed mutant Ligers* who are much more knowledgeable than the herder (a.k.a. you)

In this environment you have to learn to simply trust your people (although this is not simple at all :), mark the vision, let them loose and only help to get rid of the stones in their way (this concept was best described as the Open Kimono** policy in Peopleware)

Well…. Managing the Delver Engineers is like Herding Legendary Ligers and you need to make a superior effort to see what these ligers “likes to do” and run fast enough to set the Vision and move the rocks out of the way.

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* The Liger, is a (huge) hybrid cross between a male lion and a female tiger

** Open Kimono Attitude: You take no steps to defend yourself from the people you have put in positions of trust.

By the way, The best answer I found on the origin of the term “Herding Cats” was in Google Answers

* My daughter first words were ‘Aaa…Baa’ :-)

* The Delver Alpha was released and deployed – Want an invite?

* Ron Gross, Ofer Egozi and Tal Shiri have joined Delver’s R&D team.

* Video Bitz is a striking success story

“The British merchant ship Madagascar set sail from Melbourne in August 1853, headed for London and carrying 60,000 ounces of gold dust. – She was never seen again…” (http://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/01/29/overdue/)

Well… Saying “no more gold dust” is the only way I know to close a software release on-time…

P.S. Did you noticed that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. (http://www.futilitycloset.com/2008/02/12/trivium-16/)

1^st Warning: Chaotic post below

Software project are chaotic system and are highly sensitive to their initial conditions (a.k.a. the butterfly effect) and dynamics (e.g. wrong design, vague requirements, team professionalism etc.).

To master (/control) a software project you must be able to breathe (/smoke ;-) the project – inhale the chaotic butterfly movements around you and exhale with the needed adjustments or you will be crushed on the nearest project failure shore with zillions of butterfly excuses.

2^nd Warning: Smoking software project is bad for you health

After a decade of software projects smoking I find myself easily doing a background-surfing on the chaotic edges of my projects like I drive my car in the same daily well known route back from work but since I am part of the same chaotic system I am trying to control, I know that my background-surfing is like forgetting my own butterfly wings.

Software project smoking isn’t a social event and can’t be easily shared but it is also one of the key factors in projects surfing – If you will not be able to share your surf experience with your team, your own butterfly wings will bring the next tsunami.

3^rd Warning: Don’t practice management if you don’t like the butterflies

• Start with the mother of all lists to store your Product Manager wish list– We use eScrum Product-Backlog to store our work-items
• Prioritized them – We use 0-Yesterday; 1-Must; 2-Important; 3-Nice-to-Have and 4-”Forget-About-It”… ;-)
• Get relative estimations on all items
  • Granularity is the bronze-bullet for time estimations – Strive to the finest grained possible in reasonable time-frame  e.g. We usually aim for 2-5 days granularity in 2-3 days of time-boxed-estimation-period since the finest granularity in planning without reasonable time-box might take twice the time of doing the planned work (a.k.a. The Estimation Paradox)
  • Experience can turn your bronze bullet into silver one (ye ye, a silver one) – Relative estimation is calculated relatively upon a common scale of known work items from the team history e.g. We use Scrum “Story Points” and constantly measure the team velocity for time estimation adjustments
  • Fibonacci sequence (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 etc.) can be used to “embed” the complexity and risk of rough (with insufficient drilldown) estimations e.g. if your estimation granularity for specific task reach ~40 days then your pragmatic estimation should be around 55 days (= the closest Fibonacci sequence) since it is reasonable to believe your (insufficient) granularity conceals risk, complexity and unknowns issues which requires Fibonacci-like-”buffering”
  • Strive to synchronize your time estimation techniques into very simple one – different time estimation conventions in the same development team is the 2nd reason for time delays. (I will give 0.95$ grant if you can guess what the 1st reason)
  • I know I am different but personally, I do prefer to have “pragmatic hours” vs. the normal Agile “ideal hours” and to start the project when 1 “Story Point” =  1 “Pragmatic Day” so long everyone understand this will change as soon as you start the project and then you need to return to velocity tracking to calculate the end
  • Don’t be naïve (a.k.a. “Ideal  Days”) with two known flavors:
    • Optimistic time estimations,  assuming 24*7 of concentrated programming ability with no outside interference (a.k.a. no such thing)
    • “Stupid” hand-waiving time estimations a.k.a. It is only 10 min to code this (but ~5 days to Integrate, Review, Design, Test, Schema and DAL changes, I18N support, Styling etc.)
• Get the rough project estimation = Sum of all product backlog story points / 22 (work days in month) / Number of relevant people
  • Usually this calculation will show you don’t have enough time for the project (even without project dependencies buffer which can be added later)
  • Start the “Tradeoff Game” – Try to cut items (content) based on the relative ROI
  • Revalidate your priorities since they will be the main tool (beside dependencies) for creating the project work plan.

As I see it, estimating software projects in a realistic time-frame is a statistic prediction of chaotic, time-delay-series of events and will never be straightforward nor easy so you can only do your best in the estimation and then track the project as it goes and make the needed adaptation on the way upon crystal clear project priorities.

Good Luck!