[closeparen]

I think the demand for timeline commitments comes from a worry that otherwise the request will never be done, or that it will languish in the queue behind less important things.

Where possible, I try to frame my relationship with my stakeholders in terms of their priority order for their requests of me, and to demonstrate consistent progress on that stream. Thus, we have an understanding that the things they ask for do get done, and they want a particular one done sooner, they can move it up in the stack rank.

[doctor_eval]

Could not agree more with this, and it can scale to small teams. Establishing consistent “velocity” and demonstrating progress is way more important than estimating individual features.