Chevy Chase in “Christmas Vacation”: “Bend over and I’ll show you.”

Is there a context where time estimation is not employed, even implicitly?

No, never. I’ve stopped doing story points for this reason. When people want an estimate, I tend to chop things into reasonable same-sized chunks and do my best effort based on that. I prefer the NoEstimates approach and try to use past data to be a bit more “real” but it’s not always possible.

The truth is, if someone wants a time estimate, just do that and don’t beat around the bush. It’s too much effort to still be wrong.