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Learn to Estimate Time
Posted on August 22, 2007
No doubt estimating development hours comes from experience, but here are a few tips to help you out.
- Tip 1 – Its instinct to try to impress your supervisors/bosses by telling them you can do things quickly. Sure it makes their monthly projects and budget look good at the time, but its up to you as the developer to tell the truth, even if it means the budgets are off. Giving them false estimates only makes their job easier at the time, but it's their job to collect facts from all angles and organize this information for the good of the company.
- Tip 2 – When someone asks you "how long", your immediate response should be, "let me get back to you on that, I'll need a little time to look into it."
- Tip 3 – Determine if you have built anything similar to the task at hand. If you have, get access to the hours that were spent on the project and use these as a basis. Sometimes this is all you have.
- Tip 4 – Only give estimates in areas that you're comfortable with. You wouldn't ask Network Support how long it will take to test an application, so don't answer any questions that you don't know.
- Tip 5 – Once you give an estimate, it's your job to monitor the project's design. If this design changes minimally, it will likely affect your estimate.
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