Are you a good planner?
Most people aren’t, especially when it comes to complex projects. The reasons are numerous. Some might have a hard time thinking far into the future, some have poor time management skills, and some aren’t comfortable making long-term plans.
These reasons might seem something that one can overcome with some training. But being not comfortable planning might also come from a range of biases. Research from the Open University of the Netherlands, for example, found the presence of planning fallacy bias in IT projects.
What is this planning fallacy bias? Does everybody have it? How our unconscious biases and behaviors affect our planning ability and the success of our work projects?
You’ll find out the answers to these questions in this article.
Why People Are Bad at Planning
Surveys say that two-thirds of Americans don’t have a plan for their life. In an ideal world, everybody would have a plan in writing, with all goals and milestones described in detail. Having that plan might make them feel more focused, comfortable, and confident in their future.
Yet, most people would rather not do it.
“But planning a life is a bit complicated, isn’t it?”
Good point.
Let’s talk about planning a workday. This workplace productivity study analyzed 225 million hours of work time and found something surprising. The finding was that an average knowledge worker (accountant, manager, writer, designer) is productive about 12.5 hours a week.
That’s only 2.5 hours a day.
Think about it: out of a typical 8-hour workday, people work only 2.5 hours.
Crazy, right?
The first thing that comes to mind is: “How does it even happen?”
The reason lies in human nature. We are very good at overestimating our abilities and being overly optimistic about how much time we need to complete a task in the future.
And there’s even a term for it:
The planning fallacy.
Simply put, the planning fallacy is the human tendency to underestimate the amount of time it will take us to complete a future task. The same predictions apply to all the risks, conditions, and circumstances associated with that task.
The planning fallacy is a big issue for productivity that affects many projects, from simple daily tasks to complex work tasks. People who fall victim to this phenomenon tend to disregard their previous experiences in similar activities, preferring to rely on their skills rather than objective estimations.
Let’s demonstrate the effect of the planning fallacy in a typical IT project.
How Planning Fallacy Affects IT Projects
The above-mentioned research from the Open University of the Netherlands involved some scrum agile IT projects. The researchers interviewed project managers, scrum masters, engineers, and product owners.
Here is the most important information the researchers found on the planning fallacy’s manifestations, causes, effects, and countermeasures. Some top reasons for delays and issues in this table are related to the phenomenon.
Source: Open University of the Netherlands
Here’s what we’re making out of this table:
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Being “overly optimistic” could be a problem in IT projects. The participants shared that this issue was discovered at a planning stage when teams forecast interdependencies.
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Experience makes a difference. Many respondents said that the extent of the planning fallacy depends on the maturity of the agile scrum team.
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The planning fallacy impacts the estimation of activities. “Scrum planning unrealistic” refers to managers overestimating the number of activities needed to be completed to finish a software project in time.
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Strong opinions lead to the planning fallacy. Participants said that opinionated team members might drive planning, even if their suggestions aren’t supported by the whole team. If the proposals made by these people get accepted, the situation often leads to unrealistic planning and expectations.
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Lack of reflection on performance causes delays. If a team doesn’t properly reflect on their performance, finding improvement areas and recognizing the potential impact of inaccurate planning or bias would be more difficult.
So, we see that the planning fallacy can be a problem in IT projects. Nevertheless, the issues we just described are solvable in every case — with experience, proper research, teamwork, and reflection.
Let’s talk about these ways to solve this problem in more detail.
Can We Fight the Planning Fallacy?
Yes.
The study that we just described along with other evidence suggests many ways to battle the planning fallacy.
Some of the most effective ways include:
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Extensive preparation. The high level of knowledge and detail ensured by the extensive research can help mitigate the bias by making people highly informed about conditions, circumstances, abilities, and previous experiences.
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Experience. The level of experience affects our ability to make decisions; more experienced software development teams are much more likely to deliver their projects on time and within the budget compared to the rest.
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Teamwork. Every team member should be invited to share their opinions, views, and suggestions to avoid having one-sided discussions and strong opinions. A collaborative approach leads to an exploration of more methods and is better to avoid the planning fallacy.
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Research. Extensive research and planning can help prevent unrealistic expectations and deadlines. Every task and activity should be studied and planned by the whole team.
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Reflection. Properly reflecting on their own experience as well as experiences of other teams can lead to more accurate time and resource estimations and finding improvement areas.
These five ways can be a huge help to project managers and teams to reduce the effect of the planning fallacy. One way to include them all in planning is to create a plan to fight biases.
The first step to improving anyone’s planning skills is acknowledging that biases like the planning fallacy impact all of us. The hidden biases are everywhere, so we might not even realize that doing things a certain way might actually put our plans at risk.
But the more aware we are about common biases like the planning fallacy, the better is our understanding of behaviors and decisions that lead to them.