What simple nudges or rules actually get engineers to give realistic availability? Real tactics, please, such as calendar gating, lightweight approvals, or something else?
What simple nudges or rules actually get engineers to give realistic availability? Real tactics, please, such as calendar gating, lightweight approvals, or something else?
So if you have planned meeting in a week, group them (but not all of them on a single day either) and mark that day as unavailable. That usually already reduces a week of work to 4 days.
Then it's usually more on the longer term, but you (well, each dev actually) may benchmark continuously previous estimates against reality, so that they can understand their bias over time.
2/ do delegate approvals with a few basic rules: have a (short) rationale written down for each decision taken without a n+1 request; should be reversible if it's important.
3/ how long are your sprints usually?
Tell them you’re “hedging.”
Get the feel for that and reappraise.
viraptor•2h ago
Estimation in engineering is famously hard to solve. Maybe the best answer is - don't.