Time Predictions

Torleif Halkjelsvik: Torleif Halkjelsvik works as a research professor (seniorforsker) at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo. His research is in the areas of judgment and decision-making, attitudes and attitude change, motivation and emotion, and addictions.Torleif Halkjelsvik has a background in social psychology and judgment and decision-making. He is interested in the determinants of people's behaviors and decisions in contexts ranging from project management to addictive behaviors.Magne Jørgensen: Magne Jørgensen is a chief research scientist at Simula Research Laboratory and a professor of informatics at University of Oslo. His areas of specialization are project management, time and cost predictions, and processes for judgment and decision-making under uncertainty. He received in 2014 the ACM Sigsoft award for most influential paper last ten years for the initial paper on evidence-based software engineering. Magne Jørgensen has worked with time predictions as a practitioner  (project manager and effort estimation support) in industrial software development projects, as a researcher over more than fifteen years and as an advisor for software companies.

• Preface.- 1. Introduction: 1.1 A prediction success.- 1.2 Prediction disasters.- 2. How we Predict Time Usage: 2.1 Mental time travel.- 2.2 How did you make that prediction?.- 2.3 Time predictions are everywhere.- 2.4 How good are we at predicting time?.- 3. Predictions and the Uncertainty of the Future: 3.1 Precisely wrong or roughly right?.- 3.2 Communication of time predictions.- 3.3 Probability-based time predictions.- 3.4 Right-skewed time distributions.- 3.5 Relearning to add: 2 + 2 is usually more than 4.- 3.6 How to predict the mean time usage.- 3.7 How time predictions affect performance.- 4. Overoptimistic Predictions: 4.1 Optimism, overoptimism, and overoptimistic predictions.- 4.2 The benefits of overoptimism.- 4.3 The desire to control time.- 4.4 Motivation to make accurate time usage predictions.- 4.5 Selection bias.- 4.6 Deception.- 4.7 Who makes the most realistic time predictions?.- 5. Time Prediction Biases: 5.1 The team scaling fallacy.- 5.2 Anchoring.- 5.3 Sequence effects.- 5.4 Format effects.- 5.5 The magnitude effect.- 5.6 Length of task description.- 5.7 The time unit effect.- 6. Uncertainty of Time Predictions: 6.1 Why are we overconfident?.- 6.2 What can we do to avoid overconfidence?.- 6.2.1 The use of alternative interval prediction formats.- 6.2.2 Learning from accuracy feedback.- 7. Time Prediction Methods and Principles: 7.1 Unpacking and decomposition.- 7.2 Analogies.- 7.3 Relative predictions.- 7.4 Time prediction models.- 7.5 Consider alternative futures.- 7.6 Combinations of time predictions.- 7.7 Let other people make the prediction?.- 7.8 Removing irrelevant and misleading information.- 7.9 From Fibonacci to t-shirt sizes: Time predictions using alternative scales.- 8. Time Predictions: Matching the Method to the Situation.- 9. How to Obtain Overoptimistic Time Predictions from Others.