#NoEstimates (Allen Holub)

This keynote presents my (and many other's) thinking about #NoEstimates. It argues that estimation is a bad thing, particularly in the Agile world, and presents ways to plan that don't involve estimation.

[MarkLindell]

I soft deleted ~70% of our backlog 2 years ago and no one ever noticed. It was amazing!

[orange-vlcybpd]

My kids on a backseat remind me of the "managers". They constantly asking "when we'll be there?". And the answer is always "It depends on traffic situation. Here is the calulated ETA from navigation, but it means nothing". However the kids keep asking same question over and over again. They dont understand that the only things you can effectively manage are the stops. Maybe dad can drive at a higher speed than he is comfortable with, but it will increase likeliness of an accident.
And all the managers i've seen were those useless "backseat managers", which had no actual means to influence the process, but asked useless questions to reduce their own stress level. And if the previously communicated time of arrival got less realistic, they called the customer and "communicated" to him, like "mom, we'll come even later than i told you last time". And this piece of information reduces the stress level of the "mom", but it also doesn't make the car arrive faster. So the best thing would be to give the customer a means for real time tracking. Which the agile board actually is. This would effectively eliminate the need of reporting home every few minutes.

[honkderhase]

Any manager should be asked to estimate, how long it would take him to write a 500 pages book. If he asks what about, answer "we don't know yet", but let him estimate the pure work to write some words on a sheet of paper fivehundred times. Take this time for granted and tell him, what the story of the book should be about (a thriller) and the basic plot. And when he is mid-through writing the story, change the perpetrator... this should help him understand, what estimation for a developer is like :)

[HealthyDev]

Fantastic presentation.

One of the most valuable videos on YouTube about software development IMHO.

As Allen says at the end (and I so agree with):

It’s up to developers to get this happening on our projects - management’s not going to understand the dangers of estimating until WE educate them!

[BryonLape]

I'd love to subliminally play this in the ears of PMs while they slept.

[bapluda]

The ironic of this speech is that in the background is the logo of amazon, a company known for making their workers work long hours to achieve deadlines

[brakara]

One of my pet peeves of fibonacci story point numbers is that they're not even linear. I can easily do 8 one story point stories in a day, but an 8 story point story will take me a a week (if not more). So summing them to calculate some sort of velocity doesn't make any sense, even if this velocity could've been used for something useful - which it can't.

We're doing t-shirt sizes for epics, but because they need to fit into sprints they're always transformed to time anyway, which makes the t-shirt sizing step pointless. We're just doing it because ... agile! Not to mention that estimating epics in the first place is an exercise in futility.

Needless to say, I hate estimation with all my heart, and this video was 🔥!

[skyzhangty]

I hate those refinement sessions where you spend an hour or so just on estimating story points

[tk]

This is sooo spot on! I worked with a team a couple of years ago where the project managers were always wanting to 'bag the points' and the team were told that there velocity had to increase every sprint! Total bollocks and resulted in quality dropped and people leaving

[albeit]

Estimation does work...for management. They play down the significance and validity of estimates when they want you to make them. And then treat them as real later on. And they know this. And we know it. Or should.

This is one reason why people do startups; to get away from people who think they can control the creative and problem solving processes.

To me, great teams want to create. They want to get into and stay in a flow state. They love collaborating when a problem needs solving. And they love doing their own thing when they know exactly what needs to be done.

They love it when they can streamline things, execute fast and eliminate bugs. They love making a tool that can produce a lot of value with a little bit of user effort.

They love it when a user arrives on a page for the very first time and says "Oh, I get it!" And when the user pushes a button and gets exactly what they expect as a result.

So put them in a meeting. That'll put a stop to all that!

[knighjl]

I keep watching this and watching this video. All my managers should watch this video.

[arghallum]

The first video that I found about no estimates that answer how to plan for on time release. Thank you a lot.

[BladeTheWatcher]

The projection model built on counting stories depends on the assumption of a fully elaborated backlog where stories are all "small" (or "appropriately sized"). Now producing that also takes tons of work, and can be considered a waste as there are tons of changes in the backlog. I am not saying this is a bad idea - just stating that regardless of the method, getting projected or estimated dates will have a considerable cost associated with them, and with increasing desired precision the cost will also increase.

[AlexanderWhillas]

This is so spot-on, particularly about the role of managers, how most are not needed and those that are needed are a support role for the workers

[eshgholah]

Thank you for this video. It feels much better after watching it. It showed me that I was not wrong. God knows how many times I have tried to hit my boss when he forced me to come up with estimates.

[th_CAV_Trooper]

I've been saying this since the 1990's and everyone mocks me. Now I can tell them Allen Holub agrees with me!

[harri]

Finally someone with a sensible story. Hats off.

[SeelkadoomPL]

This made me sad. It made me realize how great things could be, and how far away my current workplace is from that greatness. Amazing talk. If I ever get a say in how to run a project, I'll definitly put the idea of rebelling against estimates on the table

[tomaskulhanek]

I experienced several sorts of managers. One sort gives me support to do my work and taking any obstacles from me. The second one use estimates, numbers and metrics to measure our performance and punish us on not meeting them. I also used estimates to give deadlines. This keynote gives me clue what I have been feeling subconsciously for longer time.

[hayderimran]

this is the most legit guy i have seen on agile...