>Yet for some reason people still insist that estimating non-trivial software is not only possible, but trivial.
It's always maddening to get into debates about this stuff with project managers who believe this nonsense. I know the Fibonacci point scale is supposed to address this by giving PMs something, but I've only ever seen it turn into time-estimates-by-proxy.
These days, I only ever give estimates in terms of time scale. A task will take "hours", "days", "weeks", or "months". As long as it's within my power, my team will only ever estimate on that scale.
It's always maddening to get into debates about this stuff with project managers who believe this nonsense. I know the Fibonacci point scale is supposed to address this by giving PMs something, but I've only ever seen it turn into time-estimates-by-proxy.
These days, I only ever give estimates in terms of time scale. A task will take "hours", "days", "weeks", or "months". As long as it's within my power, my team will only ever estimate on that scale.