Consultant's toolbox: include your confidence level with your estimates
Different professions, upbringings, and roles lead people to use and understand the same terms in different ways. When crossing these boundaries, you need to get everyone on the same page in terms of understanding (if not necessarily agreement).
For example, let’s talk estimates1.
Same words, different meaning
“When will X be done?”, the product manager asks the engineer. “In about five days!”, says the engineer.
When do each of them believe X will be done?
The engineer typically thinks they’re saying that X will be done in about five days, give or take some, if there’s no surprises. That’s an “on average, if nothing blows up or takes priority”.
The product manager typically hears that X will almost certainly be done in five days or less.
Who’s right?
Both of them. Neither.
The actual meaning here got lost in translation. People are using terms and descriptors the same way most of their peers and colleagues do, not the way their actual audience expects.
Communicate more, imply less
Here’s the fix: ask for, and provide, both the estimate and what it actually means. “I think this will be done at day A with 50% confidence, and by day B with 90% confidence.”2
Oftentimes, that’s the job: helping people bridge the different implications in their communications.
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With apologies for “estimates”; I prefer “forecasts”, and greatly prefer escaping the set-scope-flexible-timebox trap, but this is the more common terminology and usage. And that’s what we’re here about today: making explicit what terminology means. ↩︎
