People do estimating everyday without even knowing it. The majority of the estimating is done at a high level so it’s kind of odd when you run across people who struggle with this at work.

For instance, I do this almost daliy in my everyday routine. Just recently I created my own high level roadmap. Two years ago, I was looking at my house and noticed that a section of my cedar siding needed to be replaced. I had no clue where to begin. So I did what most people do and went to YouTube to get a feel for how difficult it was. I came to my own conclusion that it was a couple day at home project for myself. I just had to remove the old siding, buy new siding, hang the new siding, prime it and than paint it. YouTube was right. It was easy.

Last year I noticed that I should replace the cedar siding on the other side of the house. The work indeed would be more dificult with more edges and the need to do angled cuts. I figured I could tackle this. I said to my self: “few nights after work”. Much to my own delight it didn’t take that long. It was a semi weekend weekend with a few nights after work commitment. Much to my chargrin, the angles were super hard to cut. On the bright side of things I was able to utilize my experience from the last time I did the siding.

When spring finally arrived, I looked at the house once again to determine I wanted to update the siding by my garage. This was going to be the biggest job I would take on to date. The job required longer pieces of siding and more angles. I was trying to talk myself out of doing the work, but I knew I really should. I figured this would be a full weekend and maybe a few nights after work. Now what does this mean to me? With how short summers can feel and trips already planned. I’m planning on tackling this job in the late summer after vacations are over and the fall is fast approaching. I knew if it was a smaller job, I would have taken the work on now.

Agile road map estimating is similar to making decisions in your own personal life. Listen tour latest podcast where we give some great tips and tricks about how to estimate your road map for your company utilizing the team.