The One with(out) Estimates

Yesterday I went to a meetup about #NoEstimates, played the NoEstimates game and learned a bit about forecasting.

I initially went there because I don’t feel like I can do any estimation on my Dashboard project and had the (tiny) hope that this would help me a little bit. It didn’t really because I mostly learned that forecasting from the past is much more valuable than any form of trying to estimate effort or time needed and I don’t have any past to look back on.

But I had some interesting conversations, got a huge amount of reading material to look into this further (because I think it could be useful for our team if not for me personally) and had just SO much fun playing the game with 4 really cool developers. That’s what I love about meetups: Even if you don’t learn a lot (which wasn’t the case with this one, just generally speaking), you always meet great people and have great conversations that often help to re-spark your joy for your job and makes you go back to work a little lighter and more positive the next day.

Oh and I am definitely going to propose this game for one of our next office events!