Anchoring and adjustment is a psychological heuristic that influences the way people intuitively assess probabilities. According to this heuristic, people start with an implicitly suggested reference point (the “anchor”) and make adjustments to it to reach their estimate.

– Wikipedia

The team managing the project portfolio in a large enterprise need to come up with a rough estimate for when projects can start and what their duration might be. The master plan for all projects in the portfolio may span more than a years worth of work. This is ok. Everybody usually understand that these are extremely rough estimates that are needed to get some understanding of what type of resources are needed when and so on. No harm no foul.

When a team is assembled to work on one of those projects they are usually asked to come up with a new release plan. A new estimate of the duration of the project. However, when doing that the team tend to, unintentionally, steer towards the initial rough estimate in the project portfolio. Even if that estimate, if viewed objectively, is way off. This is anchoring. A seed has been planted in the minds of the team members that can be quite hard to get rid of.

A team is having a sprint/iteration planning meeting where the team looks at the product backlog to determine how many of the most prioritized items they can commit to. The product owner or project manager says in passing: “I think we should be able to get at least these four items into the iteration, but it is you who decide”. This is anchoring. Once the number four is introduced into the meeting that will act as an anchor. It will make it hard for the team to commit to just one item or even twenty items now that the number four is readily in their minds.

It is really important to be aware of when anchoring comes into play. Both when you are anchored by someone else and when you are about to provide the anchor your self.

An excellent example of a practice that addresses anchoring is planning poker. When not using it there will usually be one or two members that are always quick to come up with an estimate for the task at hand. It will be hard for the rest of the team members to come up with something radically different once the initial anchor is set. With planning poker everybody selects a card with an estimate on it and then show it to each other at the same time. This way you can enter the discussion without being anchored. This will hopefully lead to better decision making.