[alexmingoia]

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If managers want accurate estimates, they need to allow just as much time planning and estimating as they do for developing. And requirements must be frozen.

Just look at construction - spend years planning for 6 months of development. And there are still schedule overruns!

Sure, you can have detailed estimates. But every company I've worked at wants detailed, accurate estimates with maybe one day's worth of planning. Often they want "guesses" or "rough estimates" on the spot, literally seconds after telling you what they want. I've also never come across a single company that actually froze requirements.

And every developer knows what happens when you say you can't give an accurate estimate quickly: They demand you make a guess anyway and that becomes the estimate. If you give a range, they'll take the minimum as the estimate.