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The problem with this kind of article is that it doesn't recognise that software is built in different contexts. "Don't estimate" may be fine if your product is an SAAS that gets updated incrementally. It won't cut it if your clients question is "we've booked the O2 arena for April 2023. Can you build this by then?"

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The problem is these clients have no idea what they are doing, they should be working out if something will be ready before booking.

If they are coming to you telling you the deadline and asking if you can meet it you know your going to have problems with them. Invariably they won't have a backup for when its not done on time for whatever reason.

Yeah. The point remains though- even if they haven't booked yet, at some point they're gonna book and then it's a hard deadline. There are even cases where it's valid to come to you with a deadline: can't move Christmas, for example.

If you have a fixed deadline you descope to something you think will take ten percent of the remaining time build it in what turns out to be more like half of the remaining time and then add enhancements until you hit the deadline.

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