I've been through a ton of teams, companies, and projects over the last decade. I've yet to see a team effectively size their work and create in a way that was predictable unless it was super super small bodies of work.
I've only known the teams I've worked with to adapt to the chaos of the day-to-day. I still find it fascinating that there are teams that have their shit together somewhere in the world enough to use predictability.
A thought that occurred to me while reading your insight... Indeed it's not about predictability strictly speaking. But could it be said that in some broader way there's something to it, in this more precise sense: being more predictably successful (as in increasing the chances) in achieving the outcomes we need to achieve by being adaptable and advancing incrementally?!
I disagree to this view. For many reasons. In any serious, sustainable business an answer to the question 'When will it be done?' is crucial. And while, due to the inherent uncertainty of the work, a certain answer is not possible, a probabilistic one often is. And this in turn allows one to make the right decisions in a competitive market, and it informs one about the risks taken. So, while being agile may be primarily about being able to adapt to changing conditions, being also able to forecast with reasonable certainty - for example - by when those adaptations lead to a valuable result is not just valuable in itself, it's a necessity. Perhaps unless you're going for a high risk, one-time shot or feel comfortable to build a business on luck. Perhaps. The work Dan Vacanti and others have done in this area is invaluable.
I am familiar with their work, and what I'm writing still applies. Your predictions will be wrong. I've worked on many products and then you suddenly discover something that changes everything. The work isn't even part of your forecasts, until it is discovered.
I'm not saying you should not do this forecasting or there is no value in them. There absolutely is. But just like the weather you will still be wrong, especially the further in the future.
Only if whatever you discovered makes the near future vastly different from the recent past in terms of the flow of work. And this is then a true black swan event, extremely rare, even in new product development, not to mention the vast majority of work in SW-Dev, which is even less plagued with uncertainty.
It's not a black swan event at all. It depends on what you're doing. When rebuilding whole products, or making computer games, it's common. If you read 'Blood, Sweat and Pixels', every single game in there is delayed at least once.
Most games from Valve Software are delayed at least once too. Google the concept of 'Valve Time'.
I agree with you, when you are polishing a product or making small improvements, it's much more predictable. Then something like that popping up is far more rare, and black swan like.
But that's not all development work. Rebuilds are especially treacherous, in my experience.
Oh, interesting. If there's a whole book with loads of projects that are called unpredictable, I'd say this is evidence for a rather 'predictable unpredictability'. Whatever causes 'Valve time' to happen, causes may range from a immature understanding of preserving options, to a lack of late commitment, and some dozens of other possible shortcomings or dysfunctions. Even a inability to create a workflow that is within reasonable bounds and not behaving chaotic. We'll never know. To attribute observed delays to a inevitable and inherent unpredictability of a flow of valuable work, is quite unlikely. Besides that, dropping some work items from the backlog and replacing them with others doesn't change anything. Oh, they had to drop already delivered work? Well, what happened to fast feedback? I see a lot of possible causes for the delays, none of which has to do with inherent unpredictability. Of course, when you start a multi-year project, a forecast of the latest delivery date with 90% certainty in the first week of the project would most likely make every investor pull the money out and flee. Just like noone can forecast with reasonable certainty (hm, say 85%?) whether we'll have white Christmas in January. If that is the predictability, you refer to, we agree.
I've been through a ton of teams, companies, and projects over the last decade. I've yet to see a team effectively size their work and create in a way that was predictable unless it was super super small bodies of work.
I've only known the teams I've worked with to adapt to the chaos of the day-to-day. I still find it fascinating that there are teams that have their shit together somewhere in the world enough to use predictability.
A thought that occurred to me while reading your insight... Indeed it's not about predictability strictly speaking. But could it be said that in some broader way there's something to it, in this more precise sense: being more predictably successful (as in increasing the chances) in achieving the outcomes we need to achieve by being adaptable and advancing incrementally?!
I disagree to this view. For many reasons. In any serious, sustainable business an answer to the question 'When will it be done?' is crucial. And while, due to the inherent uncertainty of the work, a certain answer is not possible, a probabilistic one often is. And this in turn allows one to make the right decisions in a competitive market, and it informs one about the risks taken. So, while being agile may be primarily about being able to adapt to changing conditions, being also able to forecast with reasonable certainty - for example - by when those adaptations lead to a valuable result is not just valuable in itself, it's a necessity. Perhaps unless you're going for a high risk, one-time shot or feel comfortable to build a business on luck. Perhaps. The work Dan Vacanti and others have done in this area is invaluable.
I am familiar with their work, and what I'm writing still applies. Your predictions will be wrong. I've worked on many products and then you suddenly discover something that changes everything. The work isn't even part of your forecasts, until it is discovered.
I'm not saying you should not do this forecasting or there is no value in them. There absolutely is. But just like the weather you will still be wrong, especially the further in the future.
Only if whatever you discovered makes the near future vastly different from the recent past in terms of the flow of work. And this is then a true black swan event, extremely rare, even in new product development, not to mention the vast majority of work in SW-Dev, which is even less plagued with uncertainty.
It's not a black swan event at all. It depends on what you're doing. When rebuilding whole products, or making computer games, it's common. If you read 'Blood, Sweat and Pixels', every single game in there is delayed at least once.
Most games from Valve Software are delayed at least once too. Google the concept of 'Valve Time'.
I agree with you, when you are polishing a product or making small improvements, it's much more predictable. Then something like that popping up is far more rare, and black swan like.
But that's not all development work. Rebuilds are especially treacherous, in my experience.
Oh, interesting. If there's a whole book with loads of projects that are called unpredictable, I'd say this is evidence for a rather 'predictable unpredictability'. Whatever causes 'Valve time' to happen, causes may range from a immature understanding of preserving options, to a lack of late commitment, and some dozens of other possible shortcomings or dysfunctions. Even a inability to create a workflow that is within reasonable bounds and not behaving chaotic. We'll never know. To attribute observed delays to a inevitable and inherent unpredictability of a flow of valuable work, is quite unlikely. Besides that, dropping some work items from the backlog and replacing them with others doesn't change anything. Oh, they had to drop already delivered work? Well, what happened to fast feedback? I see a lot of possible causes for the delays, none of which has to do with inherent unpredictability. Of course, when you start a multi-year project, a forecast of the latest delivery date with 90% certainty in the first week of the project would most likely make every investor pull the money out and flee. Just like noone can forecast with reasonable certainty (hm, say 85%?) whether we'll have white Christmas in January. If that is the predictability, you refer to, we agree.