A client’s team spent a full week adding a CSV export to their admin panel. Two engineers, clear requirements, maybe a day of actual work. The rest of the time went to understanding existing code well enough to change it safely. That’s what I call codebase drag: when the codebase makes every task take longer than it should. It doesn’t show up in any dashboard or sprint report.
“This isn’t a bazaar. We don’t haggle over deadlines. We professionally estimate them.”
Nevermind, it does sound like you work in software. This is a very familiar quote. x.x And it always comes right before planning slows to a crawl.
I’ve never heard the phrase “We professionally estimate deadlines”, but I’m gonna start using it. Thanks for that little nugget!