"...It is our belief that over the 30 plus years of commercial computing has developed a series of sophisticated political games that have become a replacement

"...It is our belief that over the 30 plus years of commercial computing has developed a series of sophisticated political games that have become a replacement for estimation as a formal process..." No. You are confusing the natural inclination for people to negotiate with some kind of slippage into "politics" (The word "politics" is most often used to describe "system of people stuff that I do not understand and that does not make sense to me") For thousands of years, people have had a natural way of dealing with commitments where incomplete information is present. It's called "negotiation", and it's done by various techniques and tactics such that when all is done both sides are happy. We've also had ways of numerically determining tangible things. It's called math or science. These are completely different things. What I see all the time is scientific, technical people flummoxed at how business-minded people are treating them. And the reverse is equally true. The reason is that both sides are working inside a completely different universe. I like this article because it shows how multiparty negotiations can lead to disaster, but I do not like it because it confuses the true nature what's going on.