[ryanmcgarvey]

Many (most?) software projects exist in environments that demand predictability. Businesses need to be able to make promises to clients and potential customers in order to make sales and garner trust. In any remotely competitive industry these are two absolutely essential ingredients to success.

I mean, think about the software you use. Of all the shops that produce that software, which ones do you trust more than others? I'd be willing to be it's the ones that delivery predictably. At the very least the ones that deliver updates reliably - as in they do what they say.

Granted, every industry is different and some rely on trust and predictability more than others. Building an organization that is good at that is very difficult - and that cost has to come from somewhere doesn't it? In my experience it's at the cost of time spent building the product. A tradeoff between reliability and quality, if you will.

[stitched2gethr]

> I mean, think about the software you use. Of all the shops that produce that software, which ones do you trust more than others? I'd be willing to be it's the ones that delivery predictably. At the very least the ones that deliver updates reliably - as in they do what they say.

Of the software I use (slack, cloud infra, vim, Jira) exactly none of them tell me precisely when a feature will be delivered. They work hard on it and release it when it's ready.

A deadline like "in a few weeks" is acceptable. A deadline like "in 17 days" is asking to be missed.

[pwinnski]

Communicating hard targets to customer is always a mistake, because software is hard. For that matter, many other industries similarly try to avoid communicating hard targets, and for similar reasons.

Internally, though, Slack et al have targets and expect to deliver feature X by the end of sprint Y. They just don't tell you in case it slides by a sprint, and to avoid laying out a product roadmap for fast-moving competitors.

[mekazu]

Most good software that I can think of has the luxury of being delivered whenever it’s ready. It’s not estimation that improves the quality of the product but good cost/benefit analysis, although you can get one from the other.