A manager who cannot deal in error bars is not doing their job correctly, although I would also point out that it is important to re-estimate and update your bo

A manager who cannot deal in error bars is not doing their job correctly, although I would also point out that it is important to re-estimate and update your boss as soon as you think you will miss the estimate (which you may have done). In my previous environment, we were only allowed to give estimates in terms of a range of time. We had a series of predefined "buckets" of time ranges (e.g. less than a day, 1-2 days, 2-3 days, 3-5 days, 1-2 weeks, 2-3 weeks, 3-6 weeks). As the estimates got bigger, so did the error bars, and if a task didn't fit comfortably into one bucket then it was upgraded to the next. We also had design discussions and poker planning for all of these tasks. Estimates were almost always accurate, even if they weren't very precise.