Same words, different meanings
The question is simple: “When do you think this will be done?”
The technically-inclined person responsible for delivery answers with these words: “Hm. I think this will take about a week.”
What they meant: “On average, this will take about a week to finish. There’s a 50% chance it’ll take longer.” In most organizations, there’s a systemic pressure towards picking a mean-time answer rather than a 90% confidence answer to avoid having one’s forecasts questioned, so even folks that understand this communication gap are subject to answering like this without much further qualification.
What words most non-technical folks hear: “Hm. I think this will take about a week.”
What they internalize: “I’m confident this will be done in a week or less. If it goes longer, that’ll be because something went wrong, and it shouldn’t be by much.” And, similarly to with the prior framing, in most orgs there’s a systemic pressure for non-delivery folks to get as low and estimate as possible. They can plan more things, and oftentimes the blame falls on the implementors when those plans miss.
We can point fingers who it is to blame for all this, and lament the pressures intrinsic to organizations that build and sell things.
Or we can communicate better.
You can change the language of your answers and get explicit about your confidence levels:
“When do you think this will be done?” “Hm. I’m 50% confident it’ll take a week, and 90% confident it’ll be done in two weeks.”
You can use a visual:
You can change the language of your questions:
- When is the soonest I could get something, if everything went perfectly and all the stars aligned? (Spoiler: they won’t.)
- After how long will you be embarrassed that there still isn’t something live?
There you go, we did it, we have a range! That didn’t hurt, did it?
What resonates for you might differ from other folks you work with, but any of these will help turn down the heat in the room a few weeks or months hence.
