"Estimates come in various disguises, but when you peek under the trench coat there is always the question: "How long -- and using what amount of resources -- will be required to do X?" When I wear the developer hat, it can be infuriating to attempt to give an answer. It's difficult to estimate (or the product owner could do it themselves) and a lot of the time it can be difficult to see why the estimate is even important."
"As a Product Owner (PO), I am responsible for learning the market and customers' needs and translating these into feature requests which developers can turn into actual features in our products. The means varies, but most organisations have some sort of backlog in which things to be acted upon are placed while they await being picked up by some developer or development team."
Product owners must learn market and customer needs and translate them into feature requests that developers implement. Backlogs collect candidate items awaiting implementation and require continuous prioritization because incoming items exceed development throughput. Estimates provide the information needed to sequence work, allocate resources, and plan short- and long-term product lifecycles. Developers face uncertainty, hidden technical debt, and context-dependent complexity, which makes producing accurate estimates difficult and frustrating. Tension arises because product owners rely on estimates for planning while developers view estimation as error-prone or unnecessary. Better mutual understanding of priorities, uncertainties, and the purpose of estimates can improve planning and reduce friction between roles.
Read at Erik Thorsell
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