Planning Fallacy

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What is the “Planning Fallacy”?

“Hofstadter’s Law: it always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.” — Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Key Points:

• Planning Fallacy is the tendency to underestimate completion times.
• When planning, we imagine a scenario where everything goes well, and we underestimate the likelihood of things that could impact the plan.
• It’s appropriate to include a few months of Slack time to make the plan more accurate. Slack time is rarely seen as a positive thing, but it helps to include it into the planning to be ready for unexpected events.
• The inaccuracy of a plan doesn’t make it worthless. Its value doesn’t lie in its prediction, but in helping understand requirements, dependencies and risks.
• Use plans, but don’t depend on them.

Questions for Consideration:

• Do you consistently rely on plans in your work?
• Do you value the plans for the thought process required to make them, or do you rely on them to provide an illusion of certainty that doesn’t really exist?

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