Estimation, planning and tracking are an inseparable trinity. If you don't do one of them, you don't need the other two.

• If you don't estimate, you cannot plan and there is nothing to track.
• If you do not plan, estimation and tracking is useless.
• If you do not track, why should you estimate or plan?

So:

• Derive small tasks from the requirements, the architecture and the overall design.
• Estimate the time needed for every small task.
• Derive the total time needed from:
  • The time needed for all the tasks
  • The available resources
  • Corrected for the real amount of time available per resource (nobody works a full 100% of his presence on the project. The statistical average is about 55%. This is one of the key reasons for late projects!)
• Plan the next cycle exactly.
• Be sure that the work of every cycle can be done. I mean really done. Get commitment from those who have to do the real work.
• Plan the following cycles roughly.
• Track successes and failures. Learn from it. Refine estimation and planning continuously. Warn stakeholders well in advance if the target delivery time is changing because of any reason.
• There may be various target delivery times, depending on various feature sets.

If times and dates are not important to you (or to your management), then don't estimate, plan, nor track: you don't need it.
However, if timing is important, insist on estimation, planning and tracking. It's as simple as that. And it is not even difficult, once you get the hang of it.

If your customer doesn't like to hear that you cannot exactly predict which features will be in at the fatal end day, while you know that not all features will be in (at a fixed budget and fixed resources), you can give him two options:

• Either to tell him the day before the fatal day which features made it.
• Or tell him now, and let him every week decide with you which features are the most important.

It will take some persuasion, but you will see that within two weeks you will work together to get the best possible result. There is one promise you can make: The process used is the most efficient process available. In any other way he will get never more, probably less. So let's work together to make the best of it. Or decide at the beginning to add more resources. Adding resources later evokes Brooks Law (1975): "Adding people to a late project makes it later" (see also booklet #5:"TimeLine", chapter 4.1). Let's stop following ostrich-policy, face reality and deal with it in a realistic and constructive way.