Does Ball park estimate ever help [closed]

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In our projects we are often asked to give ball park estimates for activities. My question does it really help in taking decisions based on the estimate.

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Yes as pointed out above.

No if the client later says "Oh, but that's much more than the X days you initially estimated"

You need to be careful in explaining and agreeing on what "ballpark" really means

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Yes .. it can help to give rough estimates to the client but later on these estimates can show upto +/- 50% variation.

But it can help to gauge the size of the project and roughly manday efforts

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Something to add to the existing responses.

Pros:

1. Helpful for a teamleader to assess the number of resources needed for a set of activities.
2. Useful to assess whether a task would fit in a pre defined timeline

Cons:

1. Very rough estimate
2. Need to be very careful while sharing with the customer.

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I often use these ballpark estimates to give a quick price quote to a client, when based on models such as WMFP or COCOMO-II they can also help me make an unbiased assessment.