If pushed, I get my developers to give estimates in jumps of ~5x.
Their options are
2 days
2 weeks
2 months
10 months
Then I triple the estimates before sharing with the business.
We don't estimate individual tickets/bugs at all, just overarching projects.
I also ask the business to estimate the commercial/user impact of the projects too, and we track and report the reality against their estimate, to hold a bit of a mirror up to them and as a way of pushing back on doing pointless work. Those estimates we use similar orders of magnitude for - £1k, £10k, £100k, £1m, £10m.
Fermi estimations like these really help avoid protracted negotiations and the lack of precision is a feature that makes clear they are estimated.
Their options are
2 days 2 weeks 2 months 10 months
Then I triple the estimates before sharing with the business.
We don't estimate individual tickets/bugs at all, just overarching projects.
I also ask the business to estimate the commercial/user impact of the projects too, and we track and report the reality against their estimate, to hold a bit of a mirror up to them and as a way of pushing back on doing pointless work. Those estimates we use similar orders of magnitude for - £1k, £10k, £100k, £1m, £10m.
Fermi estimations like these really help avoid protracted negotiations and the lack of precision is a feature that makes clear they are estimated.