We were in the fanciest board room I have had the pleasure to sit in. Two large TVs took up one wall with a Crestron unit inset to their right. The large and beautiful table had electronics wired into it as well, and it comfortably sat 15 people. I had a slideshow up on the TVs and was talking through portfolio management and forecasting when the vice president in attendance said, “But none of this matters. There’s no way to estimate accurately. It’s all just made up.”
I was stunned. I literally got a degree in the science of project management. Developments in estimating project complexity and size over the last forty years have resulted in reasonably accurate estimation that lets us predict delivery times well. But she didn’t know that.
And that’s fine. I let it pass, because in the moment it didn’t matter, and I can build estimation into their project later. For now, I want to share with you a few tips for how to estimate accurately.
But first, a magic trick
Here is the magical trick that all pros use when estimating.
They don’t do it themselves.
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