GUESSWORK: Throwing a Spear into the Darkness

When working on projects for the first time, guesswork is the primary approach to estimating resources and establishing boundaries in the future. Although we have techniques that we can use—analogy, parametric estimation, and the like—we must accept that in planning the unknown, we will make a lot of guesses. Always.

We must treat the guesswork earnestly and diligently because we work on a particular project to achieve a result and, in parallel, develop an approach to such projects in the future. We also create a method for planning new projects.

Thus, we must track our assumptions, the data we used, and our estimates. We also must plan the checkpoints to determine whether our guesses were correct.

You probably have heard of speculative fire, a tactic in which military forces fire on likely enemy positions to provoke a reaction confirming enemy forces’ presence and position. Speculative fire is guesswork done in space, while you do guesswork in time.

{ANALOGY, FEEDBACK, FAIL FORWARD, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT, TRACK PERFORMANCE, PROJECT DIARY}