Dear community, in both professional and personal life, we often have to estimate effort. Especially in my work as a developer, I’m occasionally surprised by the effort estimates that are provided.
Surprising numbers
Let’s take the development of an application as an example. A workload of 15-30 man-days is mentioned. So if 15 days equals 100%, 30 days is already 200%. Unfortunately, I see such statements frequently, and apparently, it doesn’t bother anyone.
Let’s take an example from personal life, however. You want to build a house and have stated all your requirements. The offer states the sum as EUR 400,000, but it could possibly be double that, i.e. EUR 800,000.
At this point, you’re unsure, because it’s your own money or, in the case of financing, borrowed money. A bank certainly won’t approve of such an offer.
What this tells us
In themselves, 100%/200% estimates demonstrate a high degree of uncertainty. This uncertainty must be eliminated because such an estimate is simply unreliable, doesn’t leave a good impression, and doesn’t help anyone else.
The solution is to collect clearly assessable facts and thus eliminate uncertainty factors. Particularly in the software sector, refining the concept and developing a prototype is a good way to assess the effort involved, and sometimes even the general feasibility.
Another important point: an estimate should be comprehensible so that it can be explained to others. These are the facts mentioned above. This is helpful for everyone because some time can pass between a quote and an order, and facts are the ideal reminder.
So far my thoughts for today, good luck with estimating
Michael