Planning fallacy
A wonderful on article on planning fallacy:
People tend to generate their predictions by thinking about the particular, unique features of the task at hand, and constructing a scenario for how they intend to complete the task - which is just what we usually think of as planning. When you want to get something done, you have to plan out where, when, how; figure out how much time and how much resource is required; visualize the steps from beginning to successful conclusion. All this is the "inside view", and it doesn't take into account unexpected delays and unforeseen catastrophes. As we saw before, asking people to visualize the "worst case" still isn't enough to counteract their optimism - they don't visualize enough Murphyness.But all is not lost:
So there is a fairly reliable way to fix the planning fallacy, if you’re doing something broadly similar to a reference class of previous projects. Just ask how long similar projects have taken in the past, without considering any of the special properties of this project. Better yet, ask an experienced outsider how long similar projects have taken.
Lately, I’ve been trying to take the outsider view and planning realistically, although I’m finding I may not doing well enough. For example I should be working on a website project that I’d like to finish by Friday. However, we’ve been struck with server problems most of the day, which pretty much kills any ideas of getting to bed early tonight if I want to even try to get this thing done.
Lucky for me there are plenty of other projects that have over estimated timelines that I can work on.
At any rate. Read the rest of this fascinating article and adjust accordingly.
Posted on Monday, February 08, 2010 in Productivity
