Konubinix' opinionated web of thoughts

Guestimate

Fleeting

When you want a “raw” estimation of some work and ask people gut feeling rather than using (or because of the lack of) an appropriate statistical analysis.

should be used with past data as anchor

guestimate is only asking your gut feeling to estimate, using tools like planning poker to reach a consensus. As we know, system 1 needs some safeguards and first guestimate are not better than rolling dices (see also base rate fallacy for instance).

Refreshing our minds with past data as anchor, I think guestimate may be very powerful.

But what I often see is rather people sitting together once again and forgetting about the past data and guestimating from scratch.

guestimate vs mindgame

When you are asked to guestimate, the asking person generally already has some number in mind. In that case:

  • either you provide a number close enough -> everything is ok
  • or you provide a number much lower or much larger -> you are asked to justify the guess. This makes no sense, as system 1 does not give justifications.

In the end, it becomes more of a game of guessing what the other person has in mind rather than being sincere.

guestimate vs commitment

It happens a lot that we have no choice but guestimate stuffs. Then, we tend to fall into the question substitution game and confuse those with engagement.

I generally observe, along the way, the guestimate becomes a pseudo « promise » and people end up asking why things did not go as « guestimated ».

It happens that people explicitly ask you to engage on the guess, while you have no reason to believe that the actual time while be half of twice as big. In that case, I suggest to make the distinction between expectation vs commitment and be clear about your non commitments.

Notes linking here