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Comment by lochlan | Hacker News Reader

Reduction in scope and prototyping can help reduce risk in how wrong your estimate is, but I think it is misleading to suggest that these techniques inherently "might make a realistic estimate possible." I don't think I'm alone in that I've had tasks that were supposed to take less than a day take weeks. I'm not saying this is common, but there is no silver bullet, and assuming from the beginning that estimating is basically impossible can help bring everyone into reality.

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I'm not suggesting scope reduction or prototyping are magic solutions. I offered them as 2 examples of constructive pushback.

The essence of my point was that flat out not estimating isn't an option.

It is for some companies. Or just do very crude estimates like "this might take 3-5 weeks" even for things that might take 1 week but could take 6 weeks.

Sometimes it is better to start developing and then tell stakeholders that it will take a really long time when you run into problems. A lot of stakeholders have problems with estimates of the form "it could take 2 days or 3 weeks". It would be nice if the industri starts giving probability about estimates especially when you know that there are two clear possibillties where one is much, much larger. They might want to invest 2 days into trying to solve the problem with the understanding that it might take much more time and if that happens they can change their mind and skip the feature instead, "only" wasting two days of investigation.

But it can be. See "Wake me when it's over".

You can commit to an investment with no idea, at all, whether it will cost more than the benefit it delivers. I suppose "not an option" isn't quite the right wording. It's an option.

That's not what it means. You have to be diligent in asking properly and vetting the rules for what's to be done. It may also include gate meeting type things and regular status reporting. You just don't downshift the project into high torque when some phony date rises up.

I don't remember if it's "Mythical Man Month" or Thomas deMarco where I'd read it. They're better at explaining it than I.

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