The Fallacy of Beneficial Ignorance

The basis of #Noestimates is that decisions can be made in the presence of uncertainty without having to estimate the impact of those decisions

Here's a research paper that hopefully will put an end to the nonsensical idea of #NoEstimates.

All project work is uncertain. And has been stated here endless times, uncertainty comes in two forms - Reducible (Epistemic) and Irreducible (Aleatory).

Add to that the biases found on all projects - confirmation and optimism are two we encounter all the time. The conjecture - and it is pure conjecture- that decisions can be made when spending other people's money in the presence of uncertainty without estimating the consequences of those decisions is not only conjecture, it's factually false - a Fallacy.

Here's the paper at SSRN. You'll need to create a free account. This version is the pre-publication version, but it's the same paper I downloaded from my account. Read the paper, discover how to reject the notion of #NoEstimates, not only by its ignorance of managerial finance, probabilistic decision making, business governance violations, but foundational mathematics.

So time to learn why estimates are needed to make decisions in the presence of uncertanty, how to make those estimates, and start behaving as adults in the presence of the risk created by this uncertainty as Tim Lister tells us Risk Management is how Adults Manage Projects.