EDIT2: In spite of my personal experience I do think the author makes a strong case for this: "Adding up task estimates is a really misleading picture of how lo

EDIT2: In spite of my personal experience I do think the author makes a strong case for this: "Adding up task estimates is a really misleading picture of how long something will take." Perhaps I've had better results because I try to give myself a little padding in every task, just considering that everything requires not just typing code but getting on some calls, having back-and-forth in emails and the project management tool, testing (automated or manual), fixing a thing or two, etc. So my individual estimates are probably a bit higher than median. When I work with other developers they consistently estimate lower than me. But my numbers are deliberately not "best case", because then you know you'll go over on the total.