Does your company need estimation? Listen to Erwin’s take. He’s a CEO. He should know.
Erwin has his own company and invests his own money in that company. For him, #NoEstimates solves a clear problem: too much time wasted estimating, instead of producing.
He challenges us to investigate how much money and time we already invest in that process, and then to measure the benefits. Are we getting enough return on the time and money we invest on estimation?
We learn about Erwin’s story of adoption. How he started with gradually larger projects, even at larger clients, and what he learned about the dynamics that push companies to make larger and larger decisions. Those larger decisions look like they require estimates, but why aren’t we questioning the need to make large decisions (large batch)?
We mention Lean Startup by Eric Ries, a book that changed the way many people look at investment decisions, and the process of discovery for product development.
The CEO approach to #NoEstimates
Knowing that Erwin is a CEO of his own company, and invests his own money into that company, makes it easy to understand why he is so pragmatic. When you use your own time, and your own money to grow a business you don’t have time for “grand theories”, you need to use methods that work. And that’s what Erwin shares with us: his own approach to product development.
In a blog post about Complexity, Erwin explains some of the reasons why he has developed his own approach to product development, and why he believes it is better than the old methods he used while consulting large organizations.
In his work as a consultant, he worked for an organization that had an extreme problem: they made most of their revenue in a very short amount of time (you won’t believe me if I write it, you have to listen to it!). For that company being late was not an option. He, and his colleagues needed to find a way to deliver on-time, with 100% certainty. That sure sounds different from a “good estimate” as the Ph.D.’s in estimation promise us (“within 25% of the actuals 75% of the time”). In these cases is where #NoEstimates shines, and Erwin explains how.
We review the contributions to the #NoEstimates movement by Neil Killick and the Extreme Contracts book by Jacopo Romei.
If you want to know more about #NoEstimates, visit this page with 20 articles from 6 different authors.
About Erwin van der Koogh
Erwin is the Founder & CEO of Bitgenics, the startup behind Linc, a next-generation hosting platform for Progressive Web Applications and JavaScript Front-ends.
He is a recovering management consultant who’s been sober for about 2 years and counting. Living in (sometimes) sunny Melbourne he is a sought-after speaker on the intersection of business, technology, and complexity.
You can link with Erwin van der Koogh on LinkedIn and connect with Erwin van der Koogh on Twitter.
