Overconfidence: Why You Suck At Making Development Time Estimates

Dan Milstein from Hut 8 Labs has written a lengthy post about why software developers often struggle to estimate the time required to implement their projects. Drawing on lessons from a book called Thinking Fast and Slow by Dan Kahneman, he explains how overconfidence frequently leads to underestimations of a project's complexity. Unfortunately, the nature of overconfidence makes it tough to compensate. Quoting: "Specifically, in many, many situations, the following three things hold true: 1- 'Expert' predictions about some future event are so completely unreliable as to be basically meaningless 2- Nonetheless, the experts in question are extremely confident about the accuracy of their predictions. 3- And, best of all: absolutely nothing seems to be able to diminish the confidence that experts feel. The last one is truly remarkable: even if experts try to honestly face evidence of their own past failures, even if they deeply understand this flaw in human cognition they will still feel a deep sense of confidence in the accuracy of their predictions. As Kahneman explains it, after telling an amazing story about his own failing on this front: 'The confidence you will experience in your future judgments will not be diminished by what you just read, even if you believe every word.'"

Comments

I always follow Scotty's law

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Always tripple all estimates. That way you always look like a miracle worker.

Re:I always follow Scotty's law

[slew]

He takes everyones estimate by 'pi'....In my exp he is right.

If your PM takes somebody's imaginary estimate and multiplies it by pi and you exp it, your result will necessarily be complex, yet the error will be easy to bound with a circular range (even if with an initial wild guess)... Just say'n...

Re:I am confident thqt this is the

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they finally blocked the APK posts with a HOSTS file.

Re:Is that really the problem?

[idontgno]

Indeed, it is a Dilbert nightmare.

This particular one, in fact.

Relevant quote: "Anything I don't understand is easy to do."

Re:I sucked because I was pressureed to being suck

[hackula]

management/sales: how fast can we get this done?

dev: low 3 weeks, mid 5 weeks, high 9 weeks

management/sales:Great! I was hoping you would say around 2 weeks, because this product is being launched next week, so if we push it, we should be able to get it out the door by tomorrow approval!