Tasking developers with creating detailed estimates is a waste of time (2020)
At the end of the day, it doesn&#x27;t matter what process is used for coming up with estimates and delivering.<p>Regardless of what you think your process is, somewhere near the top of the leadership pyramid, it all boils down to a customer promise upon which hinges your organization&#x27;s reputation.<p>In non-dysfunctional organizations people at all levels can understand and adapt to curveballs that cause deadlines to slip. In such places you make estimates to the best of your ability with limited time and resources and communicate constantly with stakeholders on how things are going.<p>The hard thing is it all requires honesty.<p>Probably the most angry I ever got at work was once when, at the end of a project, I was on one of those bullshit status update conference calls with 20 people on the line. Throughout the project the team was I was on was led to believe that we were constantly behind and the deadline was from the beginning impossible to meet yet magically got pushed out several times to give us &quot;grace-time&quot;. We cut corners like mad-men, amassed insane levels of tech-debt, and all but put a midget in the machine to make it work. What happened on the call? The product management team congratulated the PM for delivering so far ahead of time. I was so angry I couldn&#x27;t even talk. Basically, the PM got accolades, the customer got shitty product, and we hated our jobs.