Best, Worst, Expected

A common question asked to product managers include release dates for work in progress.

During the development, there’s many obstacles that engineering teams face that impede the original development schedule. Maybe a part of the code base is mired in tech debt, an edge case wasn’t considered, or scope increased because the initial estimates were off. This is what makes predicting release dates difficult.

I learned that instead of giving one release date, give three istead: the best case scenario, the worst case scenario, and the expected scenario. Giving options these three options increases transparency while also giving product teams wiggle room whenever issues arise.