[HN Gopher] Delphi Method
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Delphi Method
Author : the-mitr
Score : 85 points
Date : 2021-03-06 15:27 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| adam wrote:
| We do a version of this with our clients, where we use our
| forecasting software and host a "live" forecasting session. We
| make people forecast "cold" on something: likelihood of hitting
| milestones, competitive intelligence, industry trend, whatever,
| and then have someone come in and give a talk on what we've asked
| people to forecast. We follow that up with more forecasting and
| get to see if people were influenced by the expert or not.
|
| Perhaps the most valuable part is the discussion after making
| that second forecast. We identify a lot of bias and assumptions
| people were making that they then learn from the next time they
| have to make a forecast like that.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Could this be the solution to the pain of trying to discuss a
| complex topic in zoom meetings? I kept thinking we should use
| parliamentary procedure or something but this sounds like less
| friction and it is mostly what we are already doing but with a
| little bit of structure.
|
| A Jamboard delphi session perhaps.
| [deleted]
| astrea wrote:
| My university uses this to predict COVID spread:
| https://delphi.cmu.edu/about/
| wcerfgba wrote:
| This research group does not seem to be using the Delphi method
| described in the OP Wikipedia article, it just has the same
| name.
| astrea wrote:
| Fair, my mistake. I only lightly read the post I'll admit.
| jsherwani wrote:
| Very cool, how does the team use this method as part of its
| prediction process?
|
| (Also: Roni, the head of this research group, was my PhD thesis
| advisor more than ten years ago!)
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I was excited until I discovered this method requires a
| committee.
| bluetwo wrote:
| They don't have to be in the same physical location as long as
| you have a means to consolidate feedback.
| lowdose wrote:
| Sounds a lot like reading the comment feed on hn. A panel of
| experts that have better forecasting abilities than FANG
| combined.
| thereticent wrote:
| Years ago we used this method with a group of neuropsychologists
| and physicians to develop an algorithm for clinical decision
| support for traumatic brain injury and PTSD evaluation at the VA.
| It helped provide validation of a 3 question screener that would
| get veterans to the right services while not burdening other vets
| with an hour long evaluation appointment. The screener is still
| in use today AFAIK. The Delphi process itself was a cool
| experience and allowed a lot of "cooler" analytical thought
| whereas committee meetings tend to have problems with egos and
| hot takes.
| samat wrote:
| Clicked here expecting some heart touching Object Pascal
| reveries. Not this time.
| ksaj wrote:
| I use this method for interviewing executive, technical and
| operational groups in security audits. It's much easier to dig
| down to the truth.
| minitoar wrote:
| Sounds very much like story point estimation that my team does
| all the time: "The objective of the method was to combine expert
| opinions on likelihood and expected development time, of the
| particular technology, in a single indicator."
| flixic wrote:
| Most point estimates I've been a part of have not been
| anonymous. Have you had a different experience?
| minitoar wrote:
| No, but as far as I can tell that's not a requirement for the
| Delphi method.
| judofyr wrote:
| Anonymity is the first "key characteristic" listed and I
| can't find any mention on this page that it is optional for
| this method.
|
| EDIT: Looking more into it, it seems that it went from
| "Delph method" to "Wideband delphi" to "Planning poker",
| and it's in the last step that the anonymity requirement
| disappeared. Very interesting!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_poker
| minitoar wrote:
| Characteristics are not requirements. Anyway, my original
| claim was that it was similar not identical.
| petr25102018 wrote:
| I first learned about the Delphi Method from the book Software
| Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.
|
| Although I have not used it in practice yet, I like the concept,
| especially for some more difficult (bigger) estimation tasks, so
| I am mentioning it in my book besides other "group estimation
| techniques".
|
| It is true that this is basically async "planning poker".
| bluetwo wrote:
| I first learned about it when a client hired me to write
| software to support this method for use in pharmaceutical
| planning and marketing. Very useful if done correctly.
| rini17 wrote:
| I have heard about this method in the context of group
| manipulation - "to be delphied" i.e.:
| https://anticorruptionsociety.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/de...
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| thanks for sharing, that was a great find.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I got a kick out of the sensational tone. I've seen this
| pattern at many public meetings for spending road improvement
| budgets and the like. There certainly is no deviation from the
| plan based on anything that happens in these meetings. However,
| the participation by the lower level facilitators is more
| fairly described as work-a-day rather than malicious.
| centimeter wrote:
| This is pretty funny. It sounds like some governing bodies the
| author of this document is familiar with have inappropriately
| used this forecasting procedure as a governance procedure. This
| is totally something I can imagine some bright-eyed local
| politics midwit doing.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| That pamphlet is wild. It reads as really paranoid, but I
| totally agree with it. It seems like Delphi isn't at all
| resilient to being run by bad intentioned people. This make it
| terrible for something like setting public policy.
|
| It doesn't make it worthless, though. If you had a 20 person
| company where ownership was legitimately interested in getting
| the best answer to the problem, maybe this is an efficient way
| of doing that.
| ant6n wrote:
| Not to be confused with Methods in Delphi
| http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/RADStudio/Sydney/en/Methods_(...
| RootKitBeerCat wrote:
| Note: decentralized oracles don't work, because that middle step
| of talk / signal doesn't happen
| slindsey wrote:
| A company I was at 20 years ago did a variation of this for
| software estimation. It resulted in some good discussions. It
| wasn't anonymous as mentioned here.
|
| When one person on the team says an element will take one week
| and another says 8 weeks, there are fundamental differences in
| assumptions that need to be worked out. That was the good part of
| the process. The bad was when the Project Manager doesn't let the
| process play out and simply takes the shortest of the available
| estimates.
| leetrout wrote:
| Sounds like an unstructured planning poker?
| andrewem wrote:
| It's wideband Delphi, which predates planning poker by
| several decades.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_delphi
|
| Edit: as I recall from doing estimating using wideband Delphi
| circa 2004, the main differences with planning poker as I see
| it practiced today are that estimates were in real time like
| days or weeks, and votes were collected and displayed
| anonymously, though as you would expect there was temptation
| for people to de-anonymize their own votes.
| leetrout wrote:
| Ah interesting! Thanks for the link. Everything old is new
| and the cycle continues.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| That's just planning poker.
| faichai wrote:
| This triggered my PTSD with regards to project managers. People
| whine about agile and scrum etc. but what they don't realise is
| that the biggest benefit of those processes was that they
| replaced project management led, waterfall based processes.
|
| Waterfall failed for many reasons, but one of them was because
| you'd get asshole project managers constantly taking minimal
| estimates exactly as you describe and then applying pressure on
| individual devs when they overrun the minimum estimates.
|
| One of the biggest contributors to developer happiness and
| productivity over the last 20 years has been to escape this
| tyranny.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > One of the biggest contributors to developer happiness and
| productivity over the last 20 years has been to escape this
| tyranny.
|
| We've only replaced the tyranny of deadline crunch with the
| tyranny of daily micromanagement. You can't even wipe your
| own ass without so much as a Jira ticket and half a dozen
| people signing off on it.
|
| And despite all of the rigmarole and rituals, you still have
| deadlines. Doesn't matter what the Jira board says. If some
| upper management dickweasel wants their feature, they will
| get it. Forget the story points and estimates.
| specialist wrote:
| Professional project management (PMI) embraces critical path,
| iron triangle, risk management. Iteration was always The
| Correct Answer(tm).
|
| Kids today conflate "throw it over the wall" with waterfall.
|
| Agile rejects planning, foresight, vision, end goals. Agile
| was explicitly concocted to manage upwards, in those
| organizations unable or unwilling to do proper planning.
| Unfortunately, the originators wrote down their survival
| tips, which were then misunderstood by noobs and embraced by
| profiteers. Just like every other religious text.
|
| Agile is not the victory of iteration over some imagined dark
| ages of project chaos. The Agile Methodology is to argue
| about the Agile Methodology. The cult(ural) spread of Agile
| is no different than any other vacuous self-help omni-fix
| content-free dogma.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Agile does not reject those things. That's just a
| nonsensical statement at best and a straw man at worst.
| monstersinF wrote:
| Nothing in this discussion seems to even mention the most
| important part of agile: talking to customers often
| specialist wrote:
| Absolutely!
|
| That's the genius of the Agile Methodology. Per the
| Zeroth Law of True Agility [0], we're both utterly
| correct. With no contradiction.
|
| [0] The Agile Methodology is to argue about the Agile
| Methodology.
| projektfu wrote:
| The obvious response is that PMI is a cargo cult. I mean if
| we're straw-manning everything.
| specialist wrote:
| The more interesting question is: Why did Agile beat PMI?
|
| Because project management is not a critical success
| factor.
|
| Most projects are late, buggy, or outright failures.
|
| One response was to improve project management. That
| worked okay. But like with most knowledge work, requires
| some effort.
|
| Another response was to accept the failure rate and
| simply throw more resources at the problem.
|
| aka Worse is better.
| varjag wrote:
| Worse is Better is something else altogether.
| legulere wrote:
| But wasn't waterfall always a description of what not to do?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model#History
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It was supposed to be. Then some brilliant folks at the US
| DOD wrote it into some documents on how to manage large
| scale software projects.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| Any decent project manager know their people,so if Mark says
| it will take 2 days but in reality takes 5, the PM should see
| these patterns and either help the person to improve
| estimations,or adjust project deliverables based on this
| knowledge.
| wwweston wrote:
| That's true if the project manager's personal and
| organizational incentives are to make estimates that are as
| accurate as possible.
|
| For some people and organizations, the purpose of estimates
| is not primarily informational.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| It's one of the many tools in the efficient tyrannical
| manager's toolbox, with a motto of "my goal is not to
| have you do effective work, my aim is to advance my goals
| and keep everyone below as a non-threat to those goals".
| Keep em busy and insecure.
|
| Sure nice it doesn't work on competent developers, not
| with the current job market.
| clon wrote:
| You should look up "Conjoined Triangles of Success". It might
| do something to heal that PTSD.
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(page generated 2021-03-06 23:00 UTC)