The planning fallacy is the tendency of people to underestimate how long they’ll take to complete a task or project. Why are we struggle at estimation? Kahneman and Tversky (1979) thought that it had to do with information input. When people estimate, they tend to consider only factors related to the project that’s in front of them, instead of considering factors from prior experience. The approach of only thinking ahead doesn’t have the benefit of considering more factors and considerations. It may also feel a lot better to think ahead than to recall the painful trauma of failed projects of the past. And yet, the past can be a fantastic source of factors. I’ve had software projects get delayed by[…]