First, as other have pointed out, sometimes estimates are needed (If the guys at YouTube finish their work for the Olympics next month, they have a problem.)
Second, if people only work on software where there's a clear a 50 to 1 payback (as the post suggests), there would be demand for about 10,000 programmers in the world. Competition forces most companies to fight for small, temporary advantages in their products and for incrementally lower costs with their backend systems. (And this ignores entirely the relationship between time to market and returns. Sometimes software is worth a lot if you could have it today, not so much a year from now.)
Third, story points? Not the panacea they're made out to be. I wrote a post on that, too, but one self-referential link is enough for one comment.
Finally, if you're not going to estimate a completion date, why estimate at all? The reasons he gives for estimation are actually reasons to spend time on design. Estimation done that way adds nothing.
First, as other have pointed out, sometimes estimates are needed (If the guys at YouTube finish their work for the Olympics next month, they have a problem.)
Second, if people only work on software where there's a clear a 50 to 1 payback (as the post suggests), there would be demand for about 10,000 programmers in the world. Competition forces most companies to fight for small, temporary advantages in their products and for incrementally lower costs with their backend systems. (And this ignores entirely the relationship between time to market and returns. Sometimes software is worth a lot if you could have it today, not so much a year from now.)
Third, story points? Not the panacea they're made out to be. I wrote a post on that, too, but one self-referential link is enough for one comment.
Finally, if you're not going to estimate a completion date, why estimate at all? The reasons he gives for estimation are actually reasons to spend time on design. Estimation done that way adds nothing.