[dclowd9901]

> This means that you gather up all the information you need to give product exactly what they want, and then you come back to them with an estimate: six easy monthly payments of $2500. Or, rather, you say “One full time mid-level engineer’s time for 6 months on our team, plus one full time engineer’s time from the Infrastructure team.”

But isn't the problem with this whole idea that it outlays a possible sale of a "bill of goods" insofar as we don't actually know if a project of this magnitude will actually take the time we say, and require the resourcing it requires?

I'm sorry, but I disagree with the entire premise of this post. Product may have the money but money doesn't do much on its own, and that's more an unfortunate artifact of business-school-oriented modern org charting caked with plenty of management self-importance.

If they want a product, they'll give me the time _and_ the money and go back to dealing with customers and investors. This post is _exactly_ the reason software development today is a shit show of agile and mid-level managers deciding what tech debt is worth addressing. I daresay product can go away entirely, and I would bet the product would still get built.

We have the money and time to build great products. We don't need to sell product on it. We just need to be left alone to do it.