Back in the Old Days, project managers seemed to be obsessed with comparing time-based task estimates with the actual completion times of those tasks. When estimated and actual times didn’t align, we were advised to get better at estimating. The goal wasn’t really to learn to create perfect estimates. The goal was to achieve some level of predictability in an inherently unpredictable process for purposes of short-term planning.
Nowadays we know that the fine-grained estimates we might use to inform our short-term planning in the course of a project are not “the product” for which our customer is paying, and therefore are a form of “waste.” We’ve looked for (and found) alternatives to time-based estimation that can provide the information we need to plan our work without the overhead of preparing time-based estimates for individual tasks.
At two different clients this year, I’ve seen people comparing “estimates” (actually, relative story sizes) with the actual completion times of user stories, but not for the purpose of short-term planning. Continue reading An old metric revisited: Comparing estimates with actuals