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Disagree. Upper and lower bounds can be realistically estimated. Whether the estimates meet the demands of the market is another question. I'm an engineer, not a CEO or sales person, but I'm a firm believer in selling first and building it later. Building it after it's been promised is one of the best ways to limit scope.



> Building it after it's been promised is one of the best ways to limit scope.

only if those doing the promising knows what's within bounds and what's wildly off bounds!

If the sales person makes wild promises because his commission depends on making the sale, but not the delivery, then the whole organization's interests are not aligned properly, thus fail.

If the salesman's commission comes from successful delivery, then he can bring in an engineer who can at least balance the promises. Who knows, may be different departments can cross-contaminate, leading to a better, more well rounded organization.


> but I'm a firm believer in selling first and building it later

Please elaborate! :)


In a word, it's "agile".

Let me first acknowledge that there my thoughts are a mixture of the types of projects that I've been working on, my own personality and my own path dependent experience. In particular, my way is intentionally short sighted and won't work for a project plan that takes five years. Also, for sure, if the sales team/ceo is wrong and the project isn't worth doing, then doing it "lazily" won't fix that. But with that out of the way, here's what I mean.

The engineering team has it's own values and priorities and they just don't have anything to do with what really matters to customers. In the end, everyone brings in emotional baggage from the last project they worked on, and that's what's important until new information comes in from customers and the sales team.

So what I shoot for is taking the requirements that we have and producing a long range design that will meet those and little more, and then producing features as quickly as possible and presenting it to the customer (or the customer's advocate).

Why does it limit scope? Because the deadline doesn't move! To meet the most important requirements in a way that actually sells the product, lower priorities are are cut or reframed.


I have seen "realistic estimates" be off by multiples. Also, "build it after it's been promised" is not making any sense to me, perhaps you can restate that somehow?




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