99% of teams that need estimations are not in a phase where they are designing something that is hard to estimate. And those that are usually are prudent enough to not bother R&D with project planning(yet).
99% of engineers are working on things that CAN actually be estimated fairly accurately. New CRUD APIs? New ETLs? New React component? New integration with a product that has a published API? New service? New message format? New protocol? Whatever. Just break it down enough until it’s very clear what it takes to get it done. There will be a few unknowns but you can call them out as risks. Try to eliminate risks first and raise a flag so your manager/PM can adjust his forecast.
The thing is, everyone wants to be “working on the next big thing” so much that they actually believe they are working on something groundbreaking that cannot be estimated. Either that or they are not qualified for the job yet(hence they need to learn something new, which can be unpredictable). They just need to be grounded and it’s a fairly easy journey. They are all probably emulating the symptoms of those in 1% by believing they cannot estimate their work.
99% of engineers are working on things that CAN actually be estimated fairly accurately. New CRUD APIs? New ETLs? New React component? New integration with a product that has a published API? New service? New message format? New protocol? Whatever. Just break it down enough until it’s very clear what it takes to get it done. There will be a few unknowns but you can call them out as risks. Try to eliminate risks first and raise a flag so your manager/PM can adjust his forecast.
The thing is, everyone wants to be “working on the next big thing” so much that they actually believe they are working on something groundbreaking that cannot be estimated. Either that or they are not qualified for the job yet(hence they need to learn something new, which can be unpredictable). They just need to be grounded and it’s a fairly easy journey. They are all probably emulating the symptoms of those in 1% by believing they cannot estimate their work.