Alex Wolf 🐺🌍🏳️🌈<p>Now, <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/estimations" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>estimations</span></a> are largely meaningless. What could we do instead?</p><p>Instead of dabbling in fortune telling (which as I said is what estimations are) we can instead decide how much time we’re willing to invest. It represents an upper boundary of time and therefore an upper boundary of how complex the solution may be. Shorter timeframe = less bells and whistles.</p><p>”ShapeUp” (a process framework by a company who shall not be named because they're tech bros, the bad kind) calls this "Appetite" but at the end of the day the name doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it’s meaningful (”this much time is what it’s worth to us”) and useful (”we can only do so much in that time”).</p><p>The problem with “Appetite” is that people aren’t used to it. It requires a change in how engineers think (and it requires them to actually think). But compared to <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/estimates" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>estimates</span></a> it has at least the potential to be useful.</p><p><a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/SoftwareEngineering" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SoftwareEngineering</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/Planning" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Planning</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/Tech" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tech</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/TechLeadership" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TechLeadership</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/TechMyths" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>TechMyths</span></a> <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/Bullshit" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Bullshit</span></a></p>