"No, it's less effort than that"

A valuable discussion to have is about how to change the scope so that the cost/return tradeoff is right for your stakeholders.

I've definitely seen devs assume too much needs to be done, just like I've seen non-devs ignore key parts of the problem that push up the time. Sometimes it's trying to make a general solution when actually what's needed is someone to sit down with a spreadsheet for a day.

> There is back-and-forth as the estimates are questioned for being too high, almost never for being too low.

I'm sure people will have flashbacks when I say this so sorry to those, but this is the issue addressed with planning poker. The idea being that you all say how hard the task is, without being affected by each other, and discuss when expectations aren't aligned. Someone is probably missing something.

I might think something is simple because I've not realised a complex part of the problem, or because I can see a nicer neater solution.

I get that. But as a tech guy I sometimes get itchy when the actual reality of things is ignored. A good example would be when a customer demands something that is mathematically or physically not possible. With wishes like these you could the do the planning poker all day and maybe land at a compromise that is still not possible.

As a former freelancer I am a big fan of just getting a thorough explaination of the problem, maybe with me looking over the shoulder of someone who has to solve it currently. And then I vanish in a hole for a few days and return with the design proposal I think would most elegantly, reliably etc solve the problem.

Unless we are speaking about people who have good experience with complex problems, most people are okay at describing their problems, but suck at proposing solutions (they are always modelled after the limited things they know).