In our current political turmoil, as well as project management and software development turmoil, claims are made - sometimes wild unsubstantiated claims - of how to NOT do something, how some process can fix your problems, without ever stating what the problem is, what the root cause of that problem is, or how the alleged fix for the problem will actually work.
Here's a book that speaks to how we fail and succeed to make decisions in the presence of uncertainty.
How we perceive risk, correctly or incorrectly, how emotional processes underly our judgment and how the pragmatics of behavior, along with social cognition create the basis of making really bad or really good decisions.
The opening chapter lays the groundwork for decision making in our project management domain. "Distinguishing Two Dimensions of Uncertainty," Craig R. Fox and Guilden Ulkumen.
Here are other papers that have informed me on how to Manage Projects Like an Adult, as Tim Lister suggests
- “Distinguishing Two Dimensions of Uncertainty,” Craig Fox and Gülden Ülkumen, in Perspectives of Thinking, Judging, and Decision Making, Editors, Wibecke Brun, Gideon Keren, Geir Kirkeboen, Henry Montgomery, Universitetsforlaget; UK ed. Edition, November 28, 2011.
- “Judgment Extremity and Accuracy Under Epistemic vs. Aleatory Uncertainty," David Tannenbaum, Craig R. Fox, and Gülden Ülkümen, Management Science, Vol. 63, No. 2, pp. 497-518, February 2017
- “Subjective Probability Assessment in Decision Analysis: Partition Dependence and Bias Toward the Ignorance Prior,” Craig Fox and Robert Clemen, Management Science, Vol. 51, No. 9, September 2005, pp. 1417‒1432.
- “A Study of Uncertainty and Risk Management Practice Relative to Perceived Project Complexity,” Craig Michael Harvett, Bond University May 2013.
- “Two Dimensions of Subjective Uncertainty: Clues from Natural Language,” Gülden Ülkümen, Craig Fox, and Bertram Malle, University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.
- “Judgment Extremity and Accuracy Under Epistemic vs. Aleatory Uncertainty,” David Tannenbaum, Craig R. Fox, and Gülden Ülkümen, Management Science, Vol. 63, No. 2, February 2017, pp. 497‒518.
If after reading these and other sources about making decisions in the presence of reducible (Epistemic) and irreducible (Aleatory) uncertainty that creates risk - you still believe estimates are not needed, I'll use a phrase from our Federal Acquisition world for ACAT1 (Acquisition 1) level programs, which are greater than $3 Billion
You're willfully ignorant of the immutable principles that govern processes, principles, practices, and behaviors of spending other people's money in the presence of uncertainty that creates risk tothe probability of project success.
This is not my quote, but the words from a friend and colleague, and former NASA Director of Cost.