I'm in a situation where my Boss only wants very simple answers. The problem is that in the information security and software business, this doesn't really exist. Here is the situation.
My Boss is in the process of drawing up contracts for clients where they pay us for services rendered, simple. My Boss brings me in, says "hey, based on our current stack (how everything is set up), could we support 20,000 clients?". My first answer consists of lots of questions. What client is it? How many hosts per client? What operating system? What services? What processes? How is their network set up? Etc. There is not a straight forward answer.
My Boss than says, "I just need a yes or no answer so I can relay this to the client". I basically refuse to give him a answer and try to explain. He wants to say "x=2 and y=3 and so x*y=6. But it is never that simple in the software business because there are many other externalities.
He gets frustrated because he wants a yes or no answer but we do not have the available information from the client to say so. I have expressed that we should tell the client "let's start out with 1000 hosts and we can build our way up as both of us are happy" but this gets refused.
How do I deal with a Boss that does not understand the complexities and wants a clear cut answer I don't feel comfortable giving?