Don't estimate. They don't matter and nobody cares about them anyway. If you're a sales driven/feature factory company, the estimates won't matter anyway as you'll demand to meet your obligations regardless of estimates.
If you're a company that plans far in advance, the same is true. You'll demand the work you wanted is done at a given date, again regardless of how difficult it was.
At my company, we have a well maintained backlog of work. We pick dates in the future to check in on what got done in between check ins. The product manager can (re)prioritize work as needed. We pull from the top. If there's a surprise deadline it gets brought up to everyone and then put at the top of the queue, sometimes over currently in-progress tasks.
You cannot bend the realities of time and complexity. If something is hard, an estimate doesn't make it easier. A hard delivery date also doesn't bring predictability. Ultimately, with or without estimates, you'll get what you get. If you want to get _more_, ask a team what's making them slow and then prioritize fixing the things they bring up. If every team is working optimally (they're not), hire.
I'll also add, the time it takes to prepare an estimate of any value is probably 10x what anybody asking you to estimate something is willing to provide. You're being asked to spit out a number to fit an existing narrative. If you wanted to estimate a unit of work with any amount of legitimacy, you'd need hours/days/weeks (depending on SOW). These companies scheduling weekly estimation meetings that last an hour and are bullshit scrum cards don't matter and aren't interested in being even close to correct.
If you're a company that plans far in advance, the same is true. You'll demand the work you wanted is done at a given date, again regardless of how difficult it was.
At my company, we have a well maintained backlog of work. We pick dates in the future to check in on what got done in between check ins. The product manager can (re)prioritize work as needed. We pull from the top. If there's a surprise deadline it gets brought up to everyone and then put at the top of the queue, sometimes over currently in-progress tasks.
You cannot bend the realities of time and complexity. If something is hard, an estimate doesn't make it easier. A hard delivery date also doesn't bring predictability. Ultimately, with or without estimates, you'll get what you get. If you want to get _more_, ask a team what's making them slow and then prioritize fixing the things they bring up. If every team is working optimally (they're not), hire.
I'll also add, the time it takes to prepare an estimate of any value is probably 10x what anybody asking you to estimate something is willing to provide. You're being asked to spit out a number to fit an existing narrative. If you wanted to estimate a unit of work with any amount of legitimacy, you'd need hours/days/weeks (depending on SOW). These companies scheduling weekly estimation meetings that last an hour and are bullshit scrum cards don't matter and aren't interested in being even close to correct.