[antran22]

I agree with your opinion. The problem is that managers have the notion of software estimation as a "craft". It should not be considered a craft at all, and once you held estimation to the importance of being a "craft", it is going to be a massive burden. It should be just a numerical representation of your gut feeling and past team experience.

Software engineering always has to account for uncertainty. You may try to deal with it before starting the project (waterfall) or in the process (agile). Management seems to think that by pressuring the team they can just do away with uncertainty and make their strategic planning seems more concrete, and make questionable decisions like publishing untested code. It's a power struggle all the way from the top brass to us lowly devs, but management need to understand that this is always going to bite them in the ass on the long run.