"It's not a math problem"

You've been there... The project is late, and everyone wants to know when it will be done.

Crap.

The vein on your forehead bulges as you reach for the burndown chart, or spreadsheet, or Gantt chart. You have to accurately calculate the new go-live date. It doesn't feel right, and your gut churns. ....but you must give a date.

Stop.

It's not a math problem.

Your can't calculate your way out of this kind of problem. You need different tools.

It may feel counterintuitive, but the tools to estimate timing are not mathematical. They are:

• Estimating ranges of possible outcomes
• Hypothesizing "chances of being right" for various outcomes
• Understanding "what would have to be true" for a scenario to occur (considering assumptions)
• Advice from people who have been in this particular rodeo before
• Imagination - Wild thinking through what scope or budget changes would help
• Meditation on the relative problems vs. the capability of your team
• Your intuition - good judgement - calibrated by the above.

These kinds of tools won't give you the exact date everyone is asking for. It will give something less satisfying but much more helpful - context, variables, and options.

There's a good chance it will also make others feel more invested in the outcome, because they'll see how they make a difference.

To generalize this idea beyond scheduling..... What category of problem are you facing? Can it be solved with math and physics? Or is it really a financial problem masquerading as a physics problem? Or maybe it's a organizational dynamics (i.e., "political") problem. Or maybe it's a talent problem.

Be sure you know what kind of problem you have before solving it. Defining the category helps assess solutions.