[yason]

But it's already established that deadlines are moot. So giving a deadline for planning, training, and hardware merely reduces to a random guess.

They'd be better off telling the client the truth that "We don't know a honest date and we don't want to lie and come up with an arbitrary one. I can only say it's unlikely that the project would take more than six months and you should at least be prepared to order the hardware by the early summer. We'll keep you posted."

Emphasis on the last part.

Schedules are more accurate later on when some work has been done already. Instead of creating an arbitrary point in the future keep the customer posted with: "We've already finished X and Y in the first month, so we'll soon start working on Z which is a big task but on the other hand we noticed that we don't have to do Q at all since we can just build it in terms of X and Z combined which won't take more than a week instead of the month that was originally planned."

If you tell this every week then everybody has an up-to-date view of the runway ahead. You can also give a "deadline", like: "If you need a deadline for higher-ups or administrative planning, use October 31st but tell them to prepare to plunge in earlier. We all know we'll be done then by a far margin."

Most customers that I've ever had have intuitively understood this is how it works, even if they had to have a "deadline". YMMV.

[jbrechtel]

Are you agreeing with the premise of the article? (It's not clear if you are or if you're just disagreeing with the GP).

If you are then... "We'll keep you posted." "up-to-date view of the runway ahead."

Where do these things come from if you're not estimating effort?

[iridium]

Estimation becomes a lot easier a few weeks into any project. Once you have the framework and an overall story down, and you start getting your hands dirty with a few classes, the estimation numbers start to have more confidence and weight.

The only thing you can really confirm though, is what is already completed, and that is what you should keep the stakeholders posted on. And a description of work left, not necessarily the time it will take.

[jbrechtel]

I don't understand, why not just be fully transparent?

This is the work left, we think it's this size*, this is how much work we've been getting done. It looks like we might be done at this date but that's dependent on a) our estimation being correct and b) our pace continuing.

I think it's more about managing expectations than it is about managing the information you let stakeholders have.