Hear, hear. Anyone who has worked in a quasi-management or leadership position before will understand the need for an answer to the question: "We don't have unl

Hear, hear. Anyone who has worked in a quasi-management or leadership position before will understand the need for an answer to the question: "We don't have unlimited finances. Tell me how much money I need to put towards this." Having said that, most developers refuse to respond intelligently to these questions. The answer to almost all of these question should be something like "I think delivering this goal might take X resources, but here's the smaller goals we're going to deliver along the way to the big goal so that we can reposition when we go off-track." Instead, developers say "Well we have to make sure that EVERYTHING can fit into this timebox, and our manager is going to treat this estimate as a deadline, so estimates suck!" This question is supposed to be a conversation starter. Don't shoot the manager for doing their job. And even when the manager does a poor job and treats your estimates as deadlines, call it out! It's up to the developers to put up a bit of a fight and make more intelligent decisions too. I've only met a handful of developers who are able to have a conversation like this. It's what the 'Agile' movement was attempting to fix. But it turns out conversations skills are tricky things to impart.