When did estimates turn into deadlines?

One trick, if you can get away with it, is to ensure that you are always estimating for a fixed scope exclusive of unknown unknowns.

You should not provide an estimate for "feature X implemented", but rather for "feature X engine". If you discover additional work to be done, then you need to add "existing code refactor", "feature X+Y integration", etc. as discovered milestones.

Unfortunately, you need that nomenclature and understanding to go up the chain for this to work. If someone turns your "feature X engine" milestone into "feature X complete" with the same estimate, you are screwed.

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There is a related problem that I've seen in my career: leadership thinks that deadlines are "motivating".

These are the same people that want to heat their home to a temperature of 72F, but set the thermostat to 80F "so it will do it faster".

I was once in a leadership meeting, where the other participants forgot that I, lowly engineer, was invited to this meeting. Someone asked if we should accept that deadline X was very unlikely to be met, and substitute a more realistic deadline. To which the senior PM responded that "we never move deadlines! Engineering will just take any time given to them!"

Engineering, in that case, gave the time back when I left that team.

Setting the thermostat to 80F WILL bring the room to 72F faster than if you set it to 72F on most ovens/AC devices, unless the thermostat is located far away from the device.

Also, many engineering teams WILL take any time given to them.

But instead of making estimates and plans into hard deadlines (when facing the engineers), managers can make sure the organization is ready for overruns.

And as the estimated completion time approaches, they can remain reasonable understanding as long as the devs can explain what parts took longer than estimated, and why.

Part of this is for the manager to make sure customers, sales and/or higher level managers also do not treat the planned completion time as a deadline. And if promises have to be made, customer facing deadlines must be significantly later than the estimated completion time.

> Setting the thermostat to 80F WILL bring the room to 72F faster than if you set it to 72F on most ovens/AC devices, unless the thermostat is located far away from the device.

What logic is that based on?

Most devices are just bang bang controlled on or off - so setting to 80 or 72 makes no difference.

Some rare invertor devices may use PID to ramp down as they approach the setpoint, but that's not common.

I'm going to assume we're talking about an oven below, but the principle also applies to AC:

A thermostat attached to a device will measure the temperature near the device, which typically is a bit higher elsewhere in the room, even if the sensor is at the air intake.

Also, even when the air temperature in a room reaches 72F, the walls may still be cold. This means that the temperature experienced by a person in the room will be lower than 72F, since the person will be exposed to less infrared radiation than if the room had been at 72F for a longer period of time.

So, if the goal is to reach a stable 72F (as felt by a human), the fastest way is to turn it to maybe 80F, and then turn it down when the temperature feels about right, or even a bit later (due to the thermal mass in the walls, furniture, etc).

If instead, the the temperature is set to 72F from the start, the oven will start to switch on and off quite freqently as air near the sensor reaches ~72F, and the felt temperature in the room will approach 72F assymptotically.

I live in an old house in a place that can get very cold, and I know this first hand.