All estimates are lies agreed upon
Estimation creates comfort, not certainty. A reflection on how numbers fill the void left by undefined problems.
“All estimates are lies agreed upon.”
Not because we are dishonest. Because we are impatient.
The Moment of Inspiration
It started with enthusiasm.
A group of users shared a collection of feature ideas. Each was a single sentence. No context. No constraints. No definition of success.
A senior executive gathered them into a document and asked for estimates. Immediately.
The document moved to a technical leader. Then to engineers. Then back to product.
Questions surfaced. What problem does this solve? For whom? How does it connect to existing work? What does done look like?
No one could answer.
Still, numbers were required.
So numbers were written down. Carefully. With caveats. With side notes that no one would read.
“These are too high level to be meaningful,” someone said.
But the sheet was filled anyway.
The tide had already started coming in.
The Paradox
Estimates feel like clarity.
A number gives weight to an idea. It turns opinion into something that looks objective. It creates the illusion of movement.
But an estimate without definition is not a forecast. It is a placeholder for uncertainty.
The paradox is that everyone knows this.
Product knows the problems are undefined.
Engineering knows the numbers are guesses.
Leadership knows the roadmap will shift.
And still, the estimates become commitments.
The commitments become priorities.
The priorities become pressure.
We build castles from sand and call them structures.
The Reflection
Estimation is not the problem. Sequence is.
When we estimate before we understand, we anchor to fiction. The work begins constrained by numbers that never had a chance of being true.
The meetings spent debating cost could have been spent defining purpose.
A real estimate requires clarity. It requires friction. It requires time.
Otherwise we are just pushing mounds of sand into shapes that feel productive for a moment.
By the next sprint, the tide corrects us.
No one wins in that cycle. Not product. Not engineering. Not the users.
We all just rebuild.
The Teaching
Agreement does not create truth.
Definition does.