Why Estimating and Planning Still Matter - Mike Cohn

Why Estimating and Planning Still Matter - Mike Cohn

Over the years, I’ve talked with a lot of teams who’ve been burned by estimating and planning.
They’ve seen estimates treated as promises.
Plans turned into contracts.
Teams punished for being wrong rather than rewarded for learning.
Given experiences like those, it’s understandable that many teams conclude the solution is to eliminate estimating and planning altogether.
I think that’s a mistake.
Estimating and planning still matter—not because the future is predictable, but because it isn’t.
Teams and organizations still have to make decisions about what to work on, what to delay, and what risks they’re willing to accept.
Those decisions don’t disappear just because we stop estimating.
Any time we choose one piece of work over another, we’re estimating.
The real choice isn’t whether to estimate, but whether those estimates are explicit or implicit.
In my experience, explicit estimates create transparency. Implicit estimates just hide the guessing.
One of the biggest problems with estimating is the belief that estimates exist to be accurate.
A better question is whether an estimate is good enough to support the decision being made.
When teams make that shift, estimating becomes far less stressful—and far more useful.
The same is true of planning. Planning doesn’t reduce adaptability. Over-commitment does. Good planning aligns assumptions and intent so teams can adjust quickly when things change.
I often hear people say, “Estimates are always wrong.”
Being wrong isn’t the real problem. Estimates are hypotheses, and reality supplies the data.
The real failure is treating estimates as promises and punishing teams when reality turns out to be more complex than expected.
Before estimating or planning, I encourage teams to pause and ask three questions:

• What decision does this support?
• What happens if we’re wrong?
• Who will use this information—and how?

If those questions don’t have clear answers, the problem usually isn’t how the team is estimating.
It’s why.

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