May be closer to the idea you propose; flexible polymer displays OLED, PLED and e-ink might lead to fold out displays where the display area can be increased by unfolding or unreeling more display as required (a 5.5″ display folding out to an 11″ display for instance).

Whilst the idea of a more general purpose device with an adaptable re-sizable screen is an attractive ideal, commercial and legal influences mitigate against such devices. Single purpose devices enable more control of media markets and offer manufacturers guaranteed repeat sales of hardware in different formats. Current legislation driven by old-media interests and IT ignorant legislators (DEA, SOPA) also mitigate against multipurpose devices.

I think there will be a thrashing about of different partial solutions none of which quite meet the mark in usability terms, meanwhile processing power will become cheaper making it easier to deploy single function devices in attractively cheap packages, which have nice simple single function sales propositions that consumers can grasp. Ultimately the ubiquity of cheap devices might mean that the real money is in the services and media they access (I seem to have drifted off topic a bit there).

When working in a team all members of the team and external parties need to be aware of each others progress and requirements to keep the team as efficient as possible.

“If you can’t estimate your own timescales then how do you organise your workflow and the workflow of people around you?”

You just take the most important task and do it, until you can’t do it anymore because you require something external. Then you take the next one, etc. Theoretically, ignoring context switching time, this will get you to 100% productivity (you never waste time on anything but what you do best and what you are in theory paid for your abilities in. If you are worrying about other peoples workflow, you are becoming a manager, which is not the most efficient use of your time.

“…if you know your timescales you understand the extent of the work you are doing and the key bottleneck points, if you understand them then you can make people aware of decisions that need to be made in advance to when you need them reducing any time waiting for things you require to continue.”

I guess the fundamental difference in opinion here is that I don’t think you can do anything about the bottlenecks. Other people in the organization just don’t care about your project as much as you do, they have their own problems and priorities. Effort spent persuading them, or worrying or waiting for them to do things, or even planning for them to do things, is again, wasted time- for a developer. The effect of this gets worse the bigger the company. The answer is, in my opinion an active manager who will jump in and take these responsibilities (and a chess timer to tell him when).