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.”
I’ve never heard the phrase “We professionally estimate deadlines”, but I’m gonna start using it. Thanks for that little nugget!
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.