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ryandrake

As a PM, of course, I know this padding is happening and generally will add my own:

You know in your mind it will take you 3 days

You give me, your PM, an estimate of 2 weeks

I report up the chain that it will take a month

When it's all said and done, you end up getting it done in a month by the skin of your teeth :-)

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But my point is that if there is a relation of trust between the PM and the developers, padding is unnecessary.

I had PMs to who I could give optimistic estimations and risks. That way, the PM could plan the different scenarios (like extra features in case we had spare time).

Other PMs, the ones who converted estimations into deadlines, got lots of padding. And the problem of adding padding is that it is time lost, because a developer who adds padding cannot tell that they finished earlier.

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