Sometimes you can. At some point I worked as a consultant assisting a team that actually picked the next item from the backlog as their next task. All tasks wer

Sometimes you can. At some point I worked as a consultant assisting a team that actually picked the next item from the backlog as their next task. All tasks were estimated before they were put in the backlog and assigned to someone. I would usually finish tasks in less than 30% of the esimated time, while some would use 3x+ the estimated time, and then only because they were receiving assistance a couple of hours per week. The guy doing the estimages was evaluated based on his ability to estimate accurately, so he had to inflate the estimates beyond what would be reasonable. This was in a country with really good job protection laws....