[elemeno]

But in a case like yours if sounds like steps 2 through 5 aren't strictly relevant to the change you're making, so it's no wonder that your estimate is blown out the water. (Sorry if I'm wrong, you've obviously got more context on your own platform than I do!)

It does make me wonder though if there is a trend of 'hiding' necessary maintenance work in larger tasks - if so that seems to me to be indicative of a larger problem around not being given/making the time to do those jobs as their own tasks.

[hinkley]

Yes, there is. Probably the best four projects I worked on, there was collusion to spread out the cost of necessary maintenance across all work items. Because nobody will agree to doing maintenance stories (this is how Scrum hijacks developer ethics). Never ask permission to do something that must be done.

Or to look at it another way, if no stories are maintenance stories, then all stories are maintenance stories.

[novaleaf]

I used to be all about jumping on the next fancy thing as soon as it was (pre)released. Having been burnt and learned my lesson, now I delay until it's blindingly obvious it needs to be done.

But yeah, if it needs t be done, do it.

[Sharlin]

Version x.y.0 of most software is "public beta" quality. x.y.1 is "release candidate". x.y.2 might be production-ready.