Questions for software engineers about estimates. Feel free to answer any of these in any order.
Have you ever had an explicit conversation about how to estimate projects? How did you learn?
If you feel that you were never taught the skill in any real sense, what do you feel you're doing at work when you're asked for estimates? Are you making it up? Have you developed your own personal guidelines?
On average, how confident are you in your own estimates? How do you measure success?
@polotek yeah, I'm doubtful that they add anything useful, and they definitely dilute the meaning of an estimate further.
A thing that also struck me is that you talk about estimating projects - that seems like a much larger unit of work than I ever had to estimate. Do those typically take on the order of weeks? Months? The projects I've worked on have typically lasted months or years.
@spoltier for what it's worth, I hate "story points" with a fiery passion.