I have seen many Scrum novices arguing and saying that Estimates are not useful as we are anyways putting in our focus and energy on the most important tasks.
That’s seldom true. Estimates are important and provide a rough idea about how future should shape itself.
Read this insightful post on Estimation in a Scrum Project from Mike Cohn. It shows a dialogue between client and the Scrum team.
It is important to note that Scrum projects are part of real world that requires some idea about what will be delivered. Any Scrum team cannot take the flexibility that the framework provides for granted.
The flexibility is to eliminate the unnatural, rule-powered ways from the project. It’s not to disregard the need of business.
Here’s my take on it:
“If it doesn’t make a business sense, it is not the right implementation of Scrum.”