But keep in mind that if a developer is in a sprint, he might start adding tickets to the epic because of technical/organizational issues. Suddenly the epic might look 3x more work than was originally planned. Note this is not theoretical, as it's happened 3 times to our team already this year.
But meanwhile in the example I gave, the developer gets held accountable still for not making the correct estimate. Management just passes it up the chain rather than trying to increase the confidence around the estimate.
But keep in mind that if a developer is in a sprint, he might start adding tickets to the epic because of technical/organizational issues. Suddenly the epic might look 3x more work than was originally planned. Note this is not theoretical, as it's happened 3 times to our team already this year.
But meanwhile in the example I gave, the developer gets held accountable still for not making the correct estimate. Management just passes it up the chain rather than trying to increase the confidence around the estimate.