We are pleased to release this recording of Linda Rising's talk on Deception and Estimation.  This is a one-hour talk, and is a good talk about how we deceive ourselves in a number of ways in life in general, and of course in the estimation process.

From the abstract:

"Cognitive scientists tell us that we are hardwired for deception. It seems we are overly optimistic, and, in fact, we wouldn’t have survived without this trait. With this built-in bias as a starting point, it’s almost impossible for us to estimate accurately.

That doesn’t mean all is lost. We must simply accept that our estimates are best guesses and continually re-evaluate as we go, which is, of course, the agile approach to managing change. Linda Rising has been part of many plan-driven development projects where sincere, honest people with integrity wanted to make the best estimates possible and used many “scientific” approaches to make it happen – all for naught. Re-estimation was regarded as an admission of failure to do the best up-front estimate and resulted in a lot of overhead and meetings to try to “get it right.” Offering examples from ordinary life – especially from the way people eat and drink – Linda demonstrates how hard it is for us to see our poor estimating skills and helps work with the self-deception that is hardwired in all of us."

Thanks to Linda Rising for speaking at ETE 2010 and letting us publish her talk.  

slides