Planning Fallacy Mitigation
Strategies and techniques to combat the tendency to underestimate time, costs, and complexity in planning.
Also known as: Overcoming optimism bias, Realistic planning, Estimation techniques
Category: Techniques
Tags: cognitive-biases, planning, productivity, project-management, techniques
Explanation
Planning Fallacy Mitigation encompasses strategies to counteract our systematic tendency to make overly optimistic plans. Key techniques include: Reference Class Forecasting - instead of planning from the inside (this specific project), look at a reference class of similar past projects and use their actual outcomes as the baseline. Pre-mortem Analysis - before starting, imagine the project has failed and identify what went wrong, surfacing risks your optimistic brain overlooked. Time Tracking - maintain records of actual vs estimated time to calibrate future estimates; most people need 2-3x multipliers on initial estimates. Buffer Padding - systematically add contingency time (Hofstadter's Law: 'It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law'). Breaking Down Tasks - smaller tasks are easier to estimate accurately; decompose large projects into components. Worst-Case Scenarios - include pessimistic scenarios in planning rather than just best-case. External Review - have others review your estimates; they're less subject to your optimism bias. Commitment Devices - set realistic deadlines publicly to reduce the gap between aspiration and reality. These techniques work best in combination, creating multiple check-points against overoptimism.
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