If estimating things is so hard, why don’t agencies just stop doing it?
The majority of agency leaders I know don’t like estimates much. Never accurate enough to be trusted, and usually too optimistic. If delivery teams could just be better at creating them, there would be more certainty around timelines.
Delivery teams don’t like estimates either. They take a lot of time to create, and although called ‘estimates’ they often lead to expectations about delivery dates.
So let’s just stop estimating!
Ahh, ok, yeah, it’s not that simple. An agency jumping on the ‘No Estimates’ movement isn’t like a product house doing the same
There are clients to consider. Fixed budget, or timeline or scope to most projects. A bunch of other clients and project dates to be mindful of. Most agencies sell a different thing to every client.
To stop estimating would be to accept that estimates are of no use at all. That we can’t be better at estimating. That guessing would be just as good.
Or if not guessing, how about working on things in priority order until the money / time runs out. Or working through a limited list of desirable outcomes, and evolving the approaches until the budget is gone. You’re likely thinking of Agile right now.
But agency clients who want true Agile delivery are few and far between. What most want is ‘more stuff faster’.
Not many agencies are capable of first selling and then deliverying on real ‘No Estimates’, value-driven project delivery.
So we’re stuck with estimates. And to estimate well you have to know more. And to know more you have to align the client and team around a project, understand where the value is, and agree on how to deliver it.
And true alignment rarely comes before (new client) sales in agencies.
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Cover Photo by Dan Horgan