Estimates.. First, part of the team makes "high-level" estimates which are based on informal, incomplete, still-evolving specs and an unstable back-end. The project people report the estimates to the client and elevate the status of these inaccurate estimates to that of commitments.

Then, before the "sprint", we review our initial estimates *ahum commitments* in greater (technical) detail. Because there are still a lot of unknowns, we tend to estimate more buffer here (back-end is often not ready, always ping-pong between project people and dev-team about unclear specs, more work than originally expected, and often late modifications to the original spec).

When an estimate becomes more than 50% extra time at the "refinement", we are told: "sorry, we gotta do it in less" and when it doesn't work out, we're kindly asked to spend part of our weekend catching up at 100% pay rate (legally it's 150-200%).

FUCK THIS SHIT

*quotes used abundantly because these terms belong to "agile/scrum" terminology but we're only pretending