Is ‘Over-estimation’ a bad thing?

A question that comes my way quite often from fellow practitioners “Is over-estimation a bad thing?”

Here is what I would nudge them to reflect on their very own question for an answer.

Planning deals with estimating the variables involved in the future for better allocation of resources (sorry, not humans) and bring alignment among the human potential.

Anything that deals with future has to deal with uncertainty and its associated risks.

Now that if you have come this far nodding your head in acceptance, you may agree that there is no way your estimates are going to be both precise and accurate, all the time.

Hence this opens up the door for estimates being either under or over the value it can be.

The good news is that — there is nothing wrong in either.

To be specific with the topic for this post, over-estimating is in fact good around the following aspects:

💡Over-estimating the interruptions are going to be higher and hence not filling the capacity upfront for a quarter / long term.

💡Over-estimating the unknowns you discovered upfront are going to rise and hence mitigating them through frequent inspection of your plan with actual progress made.

💡 Over-estimating the complexity involved might grow with time and hence communicating the forecasts in terms of likelihood of completion (probabilistic forecasts), unlike sharing a date in the future (deterministic forecasts) with no clue on the risks / challenges with the stakeholders.