re: planning and estimation

Estimates should be versioned!

Maybe this is all it takes to unlock useful estimates?

I personally feel stress over estimates given on work - this sets expectation for others and myself, and my own burnout correlates pretty strongly to how well I keep up with this one-time 'ballpark' decision.

I'd be excellent if these tools supported flags/tags/certainty scores along with estimates - there's a push for a raw number, but there's nuance to it.

Estimates need to evolve!

Re-estimation should be the norm

Normalize updating estimates.

Emphasize what has changed/what we learned/confirmed.

It's not about what the new estimate is, it's about what we learned or realized that we didn't know before.

re-estimation is a learning moment, and that's a good thing

• about some piece of tech
• about how long it takes to do something
• about where our process is failing us (e.g. i didn't expect to get pulled into some other meeting/interview/hotfix)

They should also be digested and remapped to inform planning meetings.

planning should focus on learnings from re-estimations!

what are all the adjusted estimates?

do we even want to be good at estimation?

game-jam it, then re-estimate it, then invest in the remaining pieces (if you want)

Estimates could be 10000% more accurate if someone worked on it for one day.

Why not just start working on it - spend a day of dev time learning what to do, getting into the weeds of it.

Then, stop, come back, break down the parts.

• What unknowns do you need answers on (do these parts first).
• What for-sures will take time (we'll need a nice helper to make these tests easier, otherwise it's alot of work)

If the task gets done in that time, congrats, you didn't waste time estimating it the first time. Now you can estimate the PR and clean up process instead.