> accurate estimates are unwanted In my career I've learned that estimating usually boils down to a game involving guessing what the customer will accept, whi

> accurate estimates are unwanted In my career I've learned that estimating usually boils down to a game involving guessing what the customer will accept, while the customer tries to figure out what they want. Dig deep enough, and there's usually a dependency like "it needs to be done before X", but when X will be done is also imperfectly known, so it's a tangle of dependencies. The cases of hard dates usually involve businesses dependent on seasonal, holiday revenue or scheduled events like sports or entertainment touring schedules. Estimating for those is much easier, because the game becomes one of figuring what can be delivered by the date(s) in question. Regulatory changes or fiscal timelines are usually not as fixed as they are believed, because there's lots of ways to paper a path over delays, although its costs money and business don't like that.