Is it an execution or an estimation problem?
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash
“Is it an execution or an estimation problem?”
I came across this question when listening to a podcast on roadmap planning. It’s an obvious, yet often unasked question. When projects are off-track, there is a tendency to dive into the execution details. The focus being on “why X wasn’t achieved”, when perhaps the question that should be asked is, “knowing what we know now, was X achievable in this timeframe?”
Humans tend to not be great at predicting completion times for new tasks. According to the planning fallacy we tend to underestimate how long it will take ourselves to complete a task, and overestimate how long it will take others. There is some evidence that groups are better at estimating time than individuals. Yet, you’ll struggle to find a team that predicts timings with 100% accuracy. Estimates apply not only to time taken to complete a task, but also to quantity of achievement in a given time period e.g. sales per quarter, number of suppliers added to a marketplace per month etc.
Execution can be impacted by a myriad of factors. Some macro (nobody wants to buy in this economy!), some internal (bad management makes it difficult to operate!), some capabilities based (nobody has experience doing this!). Execution assessments are often subjective. The limits of “good-enough” vs “should be better” debatable.
When it comes to estimation and execution, both in my personal and work life, I’ve found a few factors to be generally true:
A task can usually be completed in much less time
An outcome will usually take longer than anticipated to achieve
Expectations and environment have an outsized impact on the above points
Ask for a blog post to be shipped before next week’s team meeting and it will likely take a week. Ask for the same thing by end of day and it will usually be delivered in hours. Growing a subscriber base will likely take much longer than you had anticipated and the process will not be linear. Copy on a website can be updated in an afternoon at a startup but the same changes may take days to implement in a larger, more bureaucratic org. What we can achieve is often determined by our own expectations and that of those around us.
Below are questions to help assess if a missed objective, whether individual, team based or company-wide, is due to an estimation or execution problem. The likely answer is both as these co-exist on a spectrum. Understanding the factors involved will hopefully make it easier to identify improvements.
Estimation
How was the estimation determined in the first place and can you still defend the logic?
Was it gut-feel, desire, based on historic data or determined by the variables of a framework? e.g we are setting quarterly goals and therefore have determined this goal will take a quarter. An estimate may be based on known inputs, but it can also be driven by wishful thinking. This is often the case when there is a desire to deliver on a strategy or metrics promised publicly e.g. to customers or investors. A thorough methodology isn’t always needed to derive an estimate. However, there should always be an objective reason that underpins the logic. When the estimate is more of a guesstimate (e.g. first quarter selling new product where no prior data is available), this should be acknowledged and treated as a flag post to benchmark future goals.
Did material factors change since the estimation was determined?
Even the most reasonable and well thought out estimates can be subject to factors outside of our control. Did changes in the economic climate slow down sales cycles? Did an employee leave, leaving a team under-resourced? Did a competing priority end up taking precedence? It may be a case of an initial accurate estimate that wasn’t updated when the input factors changed.
Is the type of work able to be estimated?
Just because something can be listed as a metric on a dashboard does not mean it is estimate-able. This is particularly true for problems that are more art than science, novel or sentiment based. You can’t accurately predict how quickly you will close your first sale, how well a marketing campaign will resonate or how much an initiative will increase employee engagement, but you can track their success and use data to iterate. It is useful to set time bound goals as progress indicators, as long as you're aware of their limitations.
Execution
What level of commitment was given?
Be honest with yourself. Was this a 100% effort attempt towards the goal or a half-hearted trudge? What level of desire was there to achieve the output? Individuals and teams are known to sign-up for goals that they are apathetic towards, because it is the thing that should be done or is the path of least resistance. Is there a culture of delivery or is an overarching lack of commitment to the real issue? Given the level of commitment, how would you rate execution? Is that level of commitment changeable next time around?
What prevented the work from being done?
This question can help identify if the root cause of issues is environmental or capability based. Were there external factors that prevented the work from being done? e.g. slow sign off on decisions from key stakeholders, budget constraints, new joiners being onboarded, ever-changing goalposts for success. Did the people delivering the work have the necessary skills to achieve the goal in the time frame? If yes, what prevented them from doing so?
Would you be happy with this result if the specific goal hadn’t been set?
Good execution can be undervalued if it is linked to an overly ambitious or unachievable goal. Bad execution can be undeservedly celebrated if the bar is set (knowingly or unknowingly) low. Would you be happy with this result if you hadn't set that specific target? Is the output of the work trending in the right direction? Do you know what good looks like for this type of work and can you compare it to a baseline adjusted for the context of your company? Again, being honest with yourself, how would you rate this output if it wasn’t delivered by you/your team? We can be our own harshest critics or biggest excuse-generators. Stepping back and trying to take an objective view of the work can help understand if there are execution issues.
Perfect estimation and execution in any domain are extremely rare. When assessing performance aim to understand the underlying variables. Amend the factors causing the bad. Double-down on and celebrate the factors causing the good. Treat the process as a continuous work in progress. It can be easy to fall into the trap of incessantly focusing on reporting and reviewing performance against targets. The aim should be instead to focus on developing a structure that inherently optimises.
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