Hofstadter’s law
It always takes longer than you expect. (Even when you factor in Hofstadter’s law.)
Observations
- It is generally observed the longer duration of a project it gets delayed even longer. This by no means is a linear increment. Ex- If a project is 1 week long with delays it tends to complete in 2 weeks. But if it is 5 weeks long it may need 20 weeks to conclude.
- Between Hofstadter’s law and Parkinson’s Law it seems like there is no right way to estimate any project. If it is estimated for a short duration it will anyway be delayed. If it is estimated for a longer duration it will be much more delayed and a much lesser return on investment.
Solution
There is the highest return on investment and minimal loss when the projects are smaller. If the project is large and is anyway going to be delayed, then the best course of action seems like breaking down the project into smaller known goals and prioritizing them by maximum impact. This way atleast some return will be earned and some new learnings will be created.
The intent should be simply only to break the work into smaller goals and track them. The logical course of action is to plan for 2 or 3 potential futures and work on those which have the highest certainty to materialize. Re-evaluate the strategy after each chunk of work is done and replan.
After a point of time the Unknown Unknown will be releaved or there will be [[ diminishing returns ]] from the further investments.
Anti-pattern
Terms like [[ MVP ]] and [[ Agile ]] are abused heavily. These are never an excuse for the absence of planning or bad quality of work.
Reference
Book: [[ Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid ]]