One of the comments on the original article nails it.  The real problem is conflating &quot;estimates&quot; with &quot;deadlines&quot; or &quot;commitments&quot;.  You see it with the casual replacement of &quot;story estimating&quot; with &quot;story sizing&quot; in our language.  &quot;Sizing&quot; implies a degree of certainty that may not be there.<p>Estimating is most definitely useful.  But you have to fight every step of the way to keep an estimate from becoming a &quot;promise&quot;.  Promises that can&#x27;t be kept are not good for any of the parties involved and lead to things like developer burnout, poor quality, technical debt, surreptitiously reduced scope, lack of trust...it goes on and on.