‘How longs this going to take’, we are always going to get asked this.
But don’t panic. Your stakeholders won’t usually want an instant answer, they will always want an accurate one though. And your team will want to be comfortable with any date provided.
So how do you balance the needs of your stakeholders AND your team?
Here are three tips to help you to keep the peace and improve your accuracy.
- have a look at historic work and calculate cycle time. You should start to see patterns that should help you improve your accuracy.
- If you don’t have all of the answers, caveat and provide a plan on how to clarify, then provide a revised estimate once the caveats are removed.
- Track against the estimate, as you learn more, revisit and communicate any potential risks to movement.
It goes without saying that every team will be slightly different, but there will always be similar patterns to keep an eye on.
