A week or two ago, we saw the first interesting new blog post on the bizarre and rancorous #NoEstimates movement in quite some time. Although that post is titled “definitions of #NoEstimates”, it’s not really “definitions” per se; it seems instead to be more of a mixed list of NE approaches (sometimes contradictory, as the author himself notes) and miscellaneous arguments that have been frequently made in favor of the movement. To the best of my knowledge, no such overall compilation has ever been made by a #NoEstimates proponent; as such, I applaud Jay Bazuzi for putting it together.

Of course, each of the described approaches/arguments has been outlined (and countered) individually many times before. But as far as I know, none of the major NE advocates has ever actually addressed any of the counterpoints to them, choosing instead just to block and insult the people making those counterpoints, often boasting proudly that they do so to “filter out the noise”.

In any case, let’s centralize those counterpoints now: here’s an item-by-item recap, springboarding off of Jay’s enumerated list of #NoEstimates approaches. For reasons of space and manageability, I’m splitting this rundown of counterpoints into two separate posts. Here goes: [Read more…]