> my experience with this mindset is that you won't be mad, but you'll just say "that's too long/expensive" and cancel the project entirely
Well, as far as this stuff goes, I kind of have it on easymode because I'm a VP Eng who also does a bunch of product management work. When I'm doing product design, I have the benefit of knowing approximate engineering LoE/order of magnitude, so I can make sure that I design products where the engineering effort fits into the product development cycle.
But it's not unusual for something to be harder than I thought because of some detail that I'm just too far from to realize, and in those cases it's clear to the team that they should be honest with challenges and we'll work around them together, vs. some bullshit because they're afraid I won't like their estimate. The last part is built with trust though and basically never "shooting the messenger" when someone tells me that there's a challenge.
Well, as far as this stuff goes, I kind of have it on easymode because I'm a VP Eng who also does a bunch of product management work. When I'm doing product design, I have the benefit of knowing approximate engineering LoE/order of magnitude, so I can make sure that I design products where the engineering effort fits into the product development cycle.
But it's not unusual for something to be harder than I thought because of some detail that I'm just too far from to realize, and in those cases it's clear to the team that they should be honest with challenges and we'll work around them together, vs. some bullshit because they're afraid I won't like their estimate. The last part is built with trust though and basically never "shooting the messenger" when someone tells me that there's a challenge.