I learned very early on in my career that the right way to do estimates is to do multiple estimates and cross-check them. If you have multiple estimates using d

I learned very early on in my career that the right way to do estimates is to do multiple estimates and cross-check them. If you have multiple estimates using different methodologies and they all are fairly close then you know you have a good estimate. Time estimates are still useful even if the range is large. If a high-bound estimate is still acceptable - great, ship it. If a low-bound estimate is barely good enough, that is a huge risk. If you get multiple estimates from multiple developers and they are wildly different, there's a conversation (i.e planning poker)