< “Those often require estimates in much the same way they're required from Star Trek's engineers: so the people with main character syndrome have something to dramatically ignore or override to prove their dominance over the NPCs and material reality.”

This is so good.

Thanks. It was hard won. I spent maybe a decade naively thinking that if we just made software methods that worked in service of stated business goals and values, they'd get adopted and we'd all live happily ever after.

It took me a long time to come to grips with the POSIWID [1] version of the purpose of planning and estimates. One of the things that really blew my mind is Mary Poppendieck's story about how they built the Empire State Building on time and under budget even though they didn't have it fully designed when they started. [2] Different, more effective approaches are not only possible, they exist. But they can no longer win out, and I think it's because of the rise of managerialism, the current dominant ideology and culture of big business. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

[2] Talk: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tyranny-of-plan/ And transcript: https://web.archive.org/web/20140311004931/https://chrisgagn...

[3] See, e.g., https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Ec...

Further: In The Next Generation, when Scotty shows up, he mentions to Geordi he anyways padded his estimates because he knew Kirk would do things like that.