I've found that it's important to show your work - don't just cough up a number, show them your disciplined process at how you arrived at that number, (and I use PERT, as a process, and it's rarely steered me wrong).
As an engineer, it's my job to give an estimate. It's my boss' job to figure out whether that can work within his budget or if the task can be re-scoped. But I have to give him a number he knows is legitimate, and not some half assed BS I pulled out of my ass.
At a recent job, I witnessed an engineering team use some kind of agile "planning poker" game to arrive at estimates. Everyone on the team thought this was a great method. Yet they consistently failed to hit their targets, and it had a very profound impact on the performance of the ENTIRE company, (where various teams had serious backlog-coupling issues).
Because I'm a devops engineer (despite previously having been a development lead at a different company - which was a Fortune 500 by the way) and therefore, not considered a "real programmer" - of course I wasn't taken seriously when I tried to advocate a more data-driven, disciplined approach. But what do I know.
As an engineer, it's my job to give an estimate. It's my boss' job to figure out whether that can work within his budget or if the task can be re-scoped. But I have to give him a number he knows is legitimate, and not some half assed BS I pulled out of my ass.
At a recent job, I witnessed an engineering team use some kind of agile "planning poker" game to arrive at estimates. Everyone on the team thought this was a great method. Yet they consistently failed to hit their targets, and it had a very profound impact on the performance of the ENTIRE company, (where various teams had serious backlog-coupling issues).
Because I'm a devops engineer (despite previously having been a development lead at a different company - which was a Fortune 500 by the way) and therefore, not considered a "real programmer" - of course I wasn't taken seriously when I tried to advocate a more data-driven, disciplined approach. But what do I know.