Why Practicing Estimates?
What does it mean to estimate? How to avoid being unpredictable.
We should not fear making estimates when planning a system or writing software. The practice of Estimates makes our lives better. For devs, TechLead, Engineering Managers, Product Managers, and so on....
For me I can estimate a project/feature then it's possible to be done with X percentage of buffer time.
If I can't estimate at all or I am not sure about my estimates, then there is some major unknown unknown in my project understanding and I need to go back to the drawing board.
I know there is fear about meeting deadlines and past trauma with deadlines with bad managers. But without estimates, we end up running a project forever and blindly.
The key to getting better with estimates is to keep estimating even after the estimate has been done. And have direct contact with stakeholders (pm, em) about the estimate changes as early as possible.
90% time estimates are negotiable if those have been alerted/flagged early(not 1 week before the deadline obviously 😅)