25 October 2025 · 4 min read
Give ranges with confidence
'Six to nine weeks, most likely seven' communicates more truth than 'seven weeks' and survives contact with reality better.
Narrow the range as unknowns resolve, and communicate when it narrows.
Estimate the unknowns separately
Well-understood work estimates reasonably. Genuinely novel work does not. Time-box a spike to convert the unknown into a known before estimating it.
Padding an unknown does not make it knowable.
Track and recalibrate
Record estimates against actuals per team. Most teams have a consistent, measurable bias they can correct for.
This is more useful than any estimation technique.
Where to go from here
If you are weighing estimation practice for an upcoming project, the useful next step is usually a short scoping conversation rather than a longer article. Bring your constraints — budget, timeline, existing systems, and the team you already have — and the decision usually resolves itself in an hour.
We run these as a fixed-scope discovery session with a written recommendation at the end, including the cases where our advice is that you do not need us.
Working on something like this?
Send us the brief. We will tell you what we would build, what we would cut, and roughly what it costs.
Talk to us