Return on Software: Maximizing the Return on Your Software Investment

Delay Final Decisions

The accuracy of estimates is almost always inversely proportional to the amount of time between the estimate and the event. The more time between “How much will the project cost?” and “The project ended up actually costing this much,” the more uncertainty there will be in the cost estimate. This is exactly the message of the cone of uncertainty (Chapter 21)—the earlier in the project, the less accurate the estimates will be.

Also remember that estimates are created so that decisions can be made. One very effective way to address uncertainty is to simply delay making the final decision. Wait until more is known about the situation and the uncertainty will go down. This is illustrated in Figure 23.4. Most software organizations ...