4 Comments

Good article, Michał! Probailities, circumstances and unkown factors influence estimations a lot. Overtime I came to the conclusion that the idea continuous delievery helps a lot to mitigate this problem in the entire vertical from business to engineering.

Great read!

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Continuous delivery sounds like a good remedy. I can imagine that, thanks to frequent iteration, we are becoming more and more certain about the results.

Thanks for sharing your perspective, Adrian!

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Great article Michał! And congrats on the new branding :)

I remember my latest usage of probability. A couple of months ago, we had an urgent and unexpected project, and ~5 days to deliver it. It was very critical, so there were daily calls with the CEO. I remember starting the week with ‘there is a 20% we will finish on time’, and then updating the probability every day. As it went smoother than I expected (and people worked like crazy), in the last day I increased it from 80 to 95%, and we finished 1 hour before the deadline, like in the movies :)

Using probability, instead of words like ‘low chance / high chance’, gave everyone a good sense of where we stand.

I still stand behind that initial 20% probability - we didnt have any significant unexpected problem, which is very rare.

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This is a great example of how to communicate precisely without making unreasonable promises. It's great that you made it on time!

Thanks for sharing your perspective, Anton.

I'm glad you enjoyed this one!

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