I rail about planning and estimation these days. Process is important, and most planning processes feel poorly done and like a waste!

Hopefully i can sus out whatever is bugging me about all this - I'm sure i sound jaded and annoying, so being able to articulate it better is a goal.

A related idea is that we should focus more on review than on planning - it's more important and should provide all the material we need for planning anyway. Instead, most planning tends to be made up on the spot.

Estimation is also made up on the spot. We just 'ballpark' it, but it's never been clear to me what the point of that is. I'd rather say, everyone think about estimates for these 5 things, come back with thoughts tomorrow - then the next day we look at subtasks with itemized work and estimates for those. Some tasks would be better as a spike/jam to hash out a quick version, then we decide how much to invest in each part of the design (the tests, the implementation, reusable portions, cleaning up related tech debt).

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