Don’t you just love it when managers pull estimates out of the air and expect software development teams to meet those estimates?
Then they get upset that the team is moving too slow. Too slow to meet the estimates that they pulled out of their ass – ASSTIMATES.
Asstimates are hazardous. Asstimates, cause us vs. them. Asstimates create fear.
Please. Please. PLEASE!!!! Stop creating ASSTIMATES and expecting your teams to meet them.
(These remarks are completely fictional. Any resemblance to any of my friends/colleagues/clients is completely coincidental.)
Amr Elssamadisy's Blog 
Anona
November 28, 2017 at 2:53 pm
I agree. Partially. But also let’s not forget that random estimates sometimes provide interesting constraints that drive hyper-creative solutions that aim to meet the impossible head on.
In the same way that poets can be inspired by a self-imposed constraint (only use some words or letters for example or a 3 line limit) and programmers are inspired by arbitrary technical constraints (writing some OO code without any “ifs”), development teams can be inspired by arbitrary deadlines.
But indeed they can be depressed by this and break trust too. Depends on the confidence and culture of the team and the orgnaization.