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Entries Tagged as 'Estimation'

Remember the Chaos

February 9th, 2012 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Every new thing involves a change. A period of chaos comes with every change. If the new thing is to be short-lived, the chaos may require a large percentage of time relative to the short-lived activity. A colleague noted that the estimates for short tasks were often incorrect by large percentages. Here [...]

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Tags: Change · Estimation · Work

Estimating Budgets: Excel and the Slide Rule

January 21st, 2010 · 1 Comment

by Dwayne Phillips Estimating budgets months and years into the future is difficult. I have yet to meet anyone who does it well enough to risk large amounts of anything valuable. The Excel spreadsheet calculates well enough, but it can provide a false sense of precision. Instead, I use a slide rule. The difficulty of [...]

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Tags: Communication · Estimation · Management · Technology

Change the Future with “Unless”

January 4th, 2010 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips It is possible to predict the future on projects. It is also possible to change the future on projects. Knowing this second property and how to state it can make a big difference to project stakeholders. It is possible to predict the future. Given a system-building project that has been planned properly, [...]

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Tags: Change · Communication · Estimation · Management

Predicting the Future

December 17th, 2009 · 1 Comment

by Dwayne Phillips People don’t predict the future well. A problems is that we attempt to predict the future often. Failing to predict the future can bring labels like “liar” and “moron.” Take care when you are about to predict the future. People often predict the future. Let’s change that a little: people often attempt [...]

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Tags: Estimation · Time