The way traditionalists play the project management game is based on one premise: being able to accurately predict the future. Don't matter that humankind is notoriously dreadful in predicting and estimating a full-on project, much the same as they are predicting the weather, sports events or the stock market.
Of course people can look at past experiences, statistics, and scientific insight to derive a project estimation. And sometimes people may be close to the actual outcome. Metrics derived from best practices, literature, science and the so-called subject matter experts are always degrees removed from the practice, the project and the job at hand. Therefore estimating your current job with this data is inaccurate. Not to say that you should ignore this data, but the true source of accurate estimation is the Team itself.
The experience built during a SCRUM project can be directly related to the people doing the work, the Team. And therefore it has a higher probability to be close to the actual outcomes. SCRUM will not help me estimate better or predict the future better. It's not even unique in using past data to estimate the work. But nothing changes the fact that - at best - a manager's estimation is an informed guess. It best be informed by the people who know about what they are doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment