“One manifestation of the overconfidence effect is the tendency to overestimate one’s standing on a dimension of judgment or performance.” Wikipedia

We know! And clearly we are good at knowing. We know how to drive a car! We know how to code in Cobol, in C# or whichever language you can dream of. We know how to paint a wall. We know how long it takes to mowe the lawn. And if somebody asks us how long it takes to do it, we are very keen in giving a well defined estimate.

Unfortunately, in 75% of the times, these estimates are just purely wrong. We will paint a wall in 3 hours and practically, 6 hours later we are still fighting with it, probably insulting the wall, the brush, the paint and anyone else showing up in the room.

Imagine now that you need to prepare a project schedule and you need estimates from your team. “How long will that take you?” “3 days” “Are you sure?” “Of course, I know what I am doing.”

Yeah right!…

And 6 days later, the guy is still busy with the same job.

And this happens every time!

And you cannot even blame him for this because he was really honest when he gave you his estimate.

Ask an expert for the time he will need to perform a job, and he will be  wrong 75% of the time.

Isn’t that just awful? That’s the overconfidence effect. We are certain that we are better at doing something than in reality.  Considering that we work in teams, this means that EVERYONE is potentially giving you an very incorrect estimate.

How can we prepare a realistic schedule when nobody is able to provide you a realistic estimate?

A solution

The best solution for a project manager is to systematically take a contingency in the estimate provided. Never trust anyone! They all are wrong. And you are wrong too when you talk about your own job.

Ask a peer who has some knowledge but is not responsible, how long it will take.  Multiply the estimate by 1.25 or even  by 1.5. In the worst case scenario, you will be only 25% too short and in the best case, you will be 5%  faster than planned.

Never trust anyone!

“Confirmation Bias is the is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.” Wikipedia

This is what I call an easy way to apprehend life. This is also the first of the various biases that stops us from being rational. We indeed tend to be more an more certain of what we believe and never challenge our own beliefs.

Imagine you have a discussion with a stakeholder before you go meet the customer project manager. And during this discussion, you hear “This guy is really into high-level. He doesn’t seem to want tot go into details and doesn’t seem to worry about it“. You go meet the project manager and you indeed realize that this guy is high-level. And everything he says confirms that. You have just been hit by the confirmation bias. You had an idea and everything was there to confirm it. If someone had told you this guy was into detail, you probably would have found every possible evidence that he was picky.

And we love that confirmation, we love to be confirmed into our beliefs. Don’t we tend to read only articles from newspapers sharing our political choices? Aren’t we systematically thinking that the proposals from people we tend to disagree with are wrong, horribly wrong.

How can we take rational decisions in this case? There is something good to take in everyone ideas, isn’t it?

How can we decide on a solution if we don’t like the engineer providing it and we think he cannot give anything but stupid proposals?

A solution

This bias can be difficult to be fought. But it is possible. We – just – need to agree on listening to our stakeholders while forgetting everything we know about them. We don’t know that they are high-level, non technical or even unable to remain on the same track without thinking of something else. We don’t know that the solution will probably be stupid. By doing this, there is a chance that we hear new ideas, ideas that challenge our beliefs and open a brand new world in front of our eyes.

Welcome to Decision Ninja, the only website dedicated to human biases and to project management.  The only website that will prove you that you take the worst possible decisions just because you are human.

And it is okay!