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"I'd like you to to give me a time estimate, including the time taken to define the task and it's exact scope."
"You want me to do that before telling me what you want me to do or letting me think about what that'll entail?"
"Look, I just need you to pull an arbitrary number out of your ass and give it to me in writing, so I can hang you out to dry when you inevitably get it wrong."
Gives a number.
"Why is it going to take so long?"
“We need it, so we can determine timelines. Btw, it needs to be done in three months.”
The irony being that really fully understanding what all a task will require and getting exact specificaion can often make a task take longer.
In my experience, it takes exactly as long as the task itself requires, but the bonus is that the task is then also complete
Doing the task estimates the task.
It's the bestimate.
Easy solution: Add a large margin for uncertainty.
I had a PM get really unhappy when they asked how confident I was with an estimate.
Apparently +/-100% upsets them.
My last employer used to ask this, i gave a estimate (best case to worst case) and he always picked the lower number. Learned something from this: never give a range, give the worst case.
I give them reasonable case and tell them it's if everything goes right.
After we exceed the estimate if they ask I tell them that not everything went right. I like my current management, they let us estimate in very low resolution, and expect that nothing will be delivered on time
I've used a variety of different tactics to deal with this issue while on different teams:
We once had a consulting company try to sell us on an automated test solution. Some higher ups were really keen on them. We had a suspicion they hadn't actually made the thing, but were presenting it as such. They were likely hoping they would get us to backdoor bankroll its creation and sell it to other clients.
So after they were done, I asked when we could get a demo of the app. They started to hem and haw. Then someone else asked when we could get an estimate on when we could get a demo. Still more hemming and hawing.
Then we asked for them to get back to us on that, and they never did. Problem = Solved.
I worked in a startup that was expanding to the US. For that purpose we hired two sales people with really good connections to the largest potential customer company in the US.
We had this product on our price list. It was a small and relatively inexpensive product (in the order of a few €100, while most of our other products had four to six figure prices). This product was stuck in development hell. We had a half-functioning prototype with the wrong chip in there, and it would need a full rework. It was a terrible product and far from usable.
So that new sales guy calls up my boss, the CEO, who's a notorious lier and proud of that fact and asks him if that device is ready to be sold. The sales guy says they don't have any customers asking for this and it's totally ok if it's not ready to be sold, he just wants to know whether it's ready.
With no need and no pressure at all, the CEO says "Oh, it's completely finished. You can sell that with no issues at all."
The sales guy believes it, and tries to sell this to that one biggest potential customer. The customer likes the idea and asks for a demo. Of course, we cannot provide one.
That was it. That customer blacklisted us and never bought anything at all from us. It burned the two sales people, they never managed to get any of our products sold in worthwhile quantities and a year later we shut down the US division.
This is definitely the thing I hate the most. Let me just work on it till it works.
But then how will middle management justify their jobs?
"What did you sell them?"
"I basically just said yes if they asked if it was in the system. So how long?"
Rule of thumb.
Double the number, bump the units.
40 hours? Nah, 400 kilohours
I'm literally on this call right now!