Director who still writes code here. You're correct, but there is a vicious cycle here: when a project is delivered late, some managers respond (incorrectly) by artificially tightening the next deadline, hoping that when the team invariably slip, it'll at least get delivered by the original deadline. This never happens. The team does hasty planning and dives into implementation as soon as possible (to save time) and ends up delivering even later.

What worked for us is what's basically mentioned in the article: taking a more structured, slightly painstaking approach to estimation. It's more tedious than gut feel story point estimation, but a lot less painful towards the end of the project.