[notional]

I work at a place now that ditched the time estimates and the sprint planning meetings and standups that go along with that and it's so much better.

Time estimates are always wrong, it always slips to the right. This is always used against you. You suffer because of it. Your work suffers because of this.

I get a couple extra hours a week by not doing daily standups, retrospectives, sprint planning, etc etc. This allows tasks to be shipped faster.

If there's a problem I communicate it up and stakeholders understand.

Want to know how long it might take? Look at some historical tasks in Jira and compare timestamps.

[city41]

At my last company I worked on two very different sides of it throughout my time there. One side did no estimates at all as the nature of the work could afford that. The other side heavily relied on estimates and spent a lot of time planning and creating them. I found the non-estimate side of the company vastly more sane, enjoyable, less stressful, etc.

I get why stakeholders want estimates, don't get me wrong. But I can't help but think just letting them go and trusting the team is ultimately more effective in many cases.

[User23]

Asking for estimates is fundamentally an expression of distrust. It’s obviously unpleasant to have to participate in a regular ritual in which those in power over you express their distrust.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes distrust or limited trust is justified, but it’s not an ideal.