1/ any day that includes a single meeting (related or not) should be marked as fully unavailable. So if you have planned meeting in a week, group them (but not

1/ any day that includes a single meeting (related or not) should be marked as fully unavailable. So if you have planned meeting in a week, group them (but not all of them on a single day either) and mark that day as unavailable. That usually already reduces a week of work to 4 days. Then it's usually more on the longer term, but you (well, each dev actually) may benchmark continuously previous estimates against reality, so that they can understand their bias over time. 2/ do delegate approvals with a few basic rules: have a (short) rationale written down for each decision taken without a n+1 request; should be reversible if it's important. 3/ how long are your sprints usually?