Manage It!

90% Done

Figure 27. 90% Done

Too many knowledge workers—especially technical people—have never been taught to estimate. Or if they’ve tried estimating, they’re too optimistic, so they underestimate the work involved for a task. Or they’ve received no feedback on their estimates, so they don’t know their estimates are off. Or they didn’t anticipate all the subtasks involved in this task, such as organizing the environment for testing or checking in the code. In any case, 90% Done occurs when the team member thinks he or she has accomplished 90% of the work but still has 90% of the work left to finish (see Figure 27, ​90% Done​).

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