Estimating features tends to result in projects with lower achieved value - in the same time period! We suggest that this is due to how value grows logarithmically while costs stay linear. Cognitive illusions prevent us from making the best decisions for success. Half of the presentation "Diagrams for Understanding and Improving Agile Practices," originally presented at Agile 2009 by Arlo Belshee and Bonnie Aumann.

1. Planning without Estimation Bonnie Aumann and Arlo Belshee

2. Create the product with the Highest Value You have 90 business days (aka 6 months) to deliver No peeking! The front of the card is all the information you have Estimated Business Value: Excellent > Good > Some > Low Flip a card Add the Actual Value in $$ to your total Subtract the Actual Cost in days from your quota

3. How it was Rigged Card Values and Costs are selected completely independently The only correlation is that there are no excellent value cards with a less than a day estimate. Cost estimates are 100% accurate Value estimates have a 25% chance of being "wrong“ Wrong is defined as off by a factor of 2, which may or may not actually cause a card to be miscategorized. In particular, that’s more likely to throw off telling whether a given card is “low” or “some” value, and not likely to misfile an excellent – which matches real world.

4. Real Results – Agile Tour 10/6/2009 Team 1: Team 2: Team 3: Team 4: With Cost Estimates $408,182 $412,958 $215,447 $410,647 No Cost Estimates $1,465,700 $1,183,00 $1,166,900 $1,227,000 Teams did 3 to 4 times better without cost estimates

5. Prioritization Matrix

6. Prioritization Matrix $$$

7. Prioritization Matrix $$$ Investment

8. Prioritization Matrix $$$ Investment Cheap!

9. Prioritization Matrix $$$ Investment Cheap! WTF

10. Typical Choices $$$ Investment Cheap! WTF

11. There’s a problem Choosing this way actually reduces Total Value -- we just saw this happen --

12. Cognitive Illusion Logarithmic Linear

13. Maximum Value $$$ Cheap! WTF Investment “An Edge”

14. Contact Bonnie Aumann @bonniea bonniea@bonniea.com ArloBelshee arlo@electroncascade.com