I seriously don't understand the obsession with estimates in the paradigm it is pushed in. Want to be steady at a reliable pace, work for a few months and figure out the average and deviations. Need a priority on tasks, use a priority queue using whatever method you assign it by, often a combination of deadline, value added, complexity and more.
Yes, I get on a high level, one needs to be able to say "yes we can make this before [date]", when using big deadlines. How often do people really have to finish something before a critical deadline or decide to drop it right then and there? I'd wager most software devs do not, let alone biweekly deadlines. Isn't agile methodology supposed to help us fight against artificially tight deadlines (customer collaboration)? Isn't the SaaS model combined with "deploy any time" designed to be profitable in accordance to features implemented? Then, why push estimates so strongly in whatever flavor of the month Scrum version BigCorp wishes to use today? What do they even add at that point? If they are really so important, why do we always feel the need to introduce human error when we can extrapolate former experiences with computer models?
Maybe it is just me being cynical. The entire need to hold so fiercely onto an estimate reeks of micromanagement and desire to push responsibility entire onto the lower ranks.
That is absolutely what it is. For example, people are comparing favorably to how sales reps are now forced to record everything they do in something like Salesforce to try to prove they are productive, which by all accounts is pretty awful for the actual people doing the selling and doesn't actually improve sales--it just makes management feel like they're doing something.
Yes, I get on a high level, one needs to be able to say "yes we can make this before [date]", when using big deadlines. How often do people really have to finish something before a critical deadline or decide to drop it right then and there? I'd wager most software devs do not, let alone biweekly deadlines. Isn't agile methodology supposed to help us fight against artificially tight deadlines (customer collaboration)? Isn't the SaaS model combined with "deploy any time" designed to be profitable in accordance to features implemented? Then, why push estimates so strongly in whatever flavor of the month Scrum version BigCorp wishes to use today? What do they even add at that point? If they are really so important, why do we always feel the need to introduce human error when we can extrapolate former experiences with computer models?
Maybe it is just me being cynical. The entire need to hold so fiercely onto an estimate reeks of micromanagement and desire to push responsibility entire onto the lower ranks.