In a conference room somewhere in corporate America, a software developer was asked to give estimates on vaguely defined feature requests. And then, get this, he had the gall to probe for more information.
The business analyst quickly grew impatient, and regained control of the meeting. "Seems like a size small to me," he said with a huffy tone.
The developer looked again at the screen. It read "Implement custom rules for new client". He thought to himself, "what difference does it make what the estimate is? How did that #noestimates guy on the internet get anyone to listen to him?"
Another developer chimed in "I think it's a medium sized effort." Our hero nodded along indifferently. "How long does a medium take in days?" the boss asked.
There were a million holes to be poked in the user story, but sadly no one in the room had the necessary attention span to talk about them for more than thirty seconds. As is tradition, everything gets a meaningless estimate assigned to it. The developers will be left to their own devices to sort out the particulars when they begin work on it, 7 months from now.
Immediately after implementing his best interpretation of the feature, the dev will get to explain to the QA how to test it. The QA was too busy testing to be present in today's meeting.
"Ok, I've got to cut this off here, I've got another meeting in 5 minutes" the BA announced, "We'll have to finish up these last 6 items in an impromptu meeting. But, they're easy ... I mean they're easy to talk about."
The developer walked out to the parking lot, and kicked a can for about 50 paces before discarding it into the grass.
