> but it misses the thing many teams need and that is a process to reliably hit dates they commit to
40 years of IT experience lead me to believe that this is only possible for the most trivial of projects with nailed down specifications and where the party building it has relevant domain knowledge. In practice such projects don't really exist. Trivial IT projects are rare, specs change, scope creep is a thing and domain knowledge is built up slowly over time.
What is necessary is that the work does not occupy more time and effort than it strictly requires. That is still a hard problem, but much less hard than to find a way to hit dates that you commit to, unless you give yourself ample room to deal with the realities of complex IT development work.
I think we’re on the same page, you have to give yourself room to deal with the complexities. It’s not perfect, but it’s a far cry from those saying there shouldn’t be any estimates or date targets with predictable delivery.
40 years of IT experience lead me to believe that this is only possible for the most trivial of projects with nailed down specifications and where the party building it has relevant domain knowledge. In practice such projects don't really exist. Trivial IT projects are rare, specs change, scope creep is a thing and domain knowledge is built up slowly over time.
What is necessary is that the work does not occupy more time and effort than it strictly requires. That is still a hard problem, but much less hard than to find a way to hit dates that you commit to, unless you give yourself ample room to deal with the realities of complex IT development work.