When it is conjectured You can't do estimates on software projects stop for a second and think about that concept?
Really, "you have no idea what so ever about how long this will take and how much it will cost?" I don't want to estimate because I think it is a waste of time is a bit different. That says you're either too lazy to do the estimating, I don't you know how to do the estimating, or you really just want to get going and write software, because that's what you do for a living.
Take a look at the picture below. The #NoEstimates contributors have mentioned estimating bias as a source of bad estimates (which they want to fix by doing NO estimates) and Bent Flybjerg. This is how to do Reference Class Forecasting for ANY project. Now you may not need to do estimates because your project is of a size that you can see the end from the start, it has low enough risk that the variances in cost are not considered a problem, or short in duration so you can control most of the variables quickly, or your customer doesn't really have that much at risk, so the investment in estimating no matter how small is not considered that useful.
But let's pretend these are not the case. There is some non-trivial amount of money at risk, the planning horizon is outside your ability to see the end, your customer has to go ask someone for that money (the CIO, the BOD), or the business actually will depend on staying on or near budget and have your features show up on or near the planned date.
Here's how to start the process of making a statistically adjusted estimate of time and budget.
