Somewhere between "Let's ignore it for now" (i.e. zero which is a very exact number as a professor of mine used to say), a few days, and "I'm not even sure we can do what's being asked for here" are a whole lot of other numbers which may be useful even if they're off by a factor of two or more.
I've absolutely had management insist on putting overly optimistic stretch goals into schedules but, at the end of the day, they haven't been totally outside the envelope of reality.
Once you've established that you've given a best-effort answer, and you're being pressed for a different hallucination of a bright future, what is the point? What is the point of giving any answer if the manager can just pull the handle and roll for a better one? If the manager in question wanted to prioritize a specific thing, there can be a discussion about that. Pressing the same button hoping for a different answer just strikes me as a behavior that necessitates record levels of cynicism (which in my experience disqualifies people from managerial positions) or room temperature levels of cognition.
That's my whole point, yet people come here to talk about what kind of strategy they use to deal with such nonesense without acknowledging the Sisyphean task of appeasing such managers, which in turn implies validation of such practices.
The other alternative is you start dropping requirements/features to meet their timeline, ideally leaning towards those they probably consider less important, creating the altered project for them. I’ve found doing so to be crucial especially for non-technical communications and when you jump a level (talking to a boss 2+ levels superior)
Otherwise if they won’t budge on time and features and resources, all you can do is put it in writing that you expect x-y time, and optimistically z might be possible.
Ultimately half the manager’s job is to account for that uncertainty with buffers, and they’ll probably double it anyways before presenting it upwards/outwards. If they don’t add their own buffer… they’ll probably run into trouble anyways
What's the point of giving an estimate in the first place then?
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