"How long will it take?"

It’s the most common question in the tech industry, and we all know the dirty little secret: the answer we give is almost always wrong. In the fast-paced world of software development and infrastructure management, we treat estimates like legally binding contracts, yet they are often little more than educated guesses wrapped in optimism.

But here’s the good news: estimates are lies, and that’s perfectly okay.

In this session, we will strip away the guilt of the missed deadline and look at estimation through a pragmatic lens. Drawing from almost a decade of battling the chaos of operations and steering complex project lifecycles, this talk explores why technical estimation fails so predictably - and why we should stop trying to make it perfect.

We will shift the conversation from accuracy to alignment, proving that the true value of an estimate isn’t the final number, but the critical conversations, risk mitigation, and shared understanding that happen while creating it.

Usually 45minutes-1 hour is a great slot, anyone involved in the tech product lifecycle or any other roles that requires estimation at some point!