SW Development Estimation

Wed 28 April 2021

The ABCD Rules of thumb for SW dev. estimation

[A] Clarify scope & requirements

This includes making sure everyone really understand the requirements

Clarifying requirements can be difficult, and often those who kwow the exact requirements, don't always understand how to convey them to the development team (itereate untill this is clear).

[B] Clarify your resources.

We all want our most senior engineers to work on new features, look into the implemenation details & provide optimistic estimates, in practice though .., development tasks will be assigned according to the available resources (NB, the priority of a certeain feature might be taken into account, but we should be carefull this doesn't become a continuous negotiating point, especially when dealing with multiple stakeholders who all see their requirements as top priority).

[C] Get estimates from the source

Detailed estimates without consulting any of the people who are going to do the actual implementation, is a recipe for a bad estimate. Alway get the input and perspective of whoever is going to actually do the work. If that's a team of people, get the team to participate in the estimate.

[D] Avoid the following common pitfalls:

Group discussions in order to clarify things, discuss bottleneccks, technical details etc. can be great, but note that it's important to guard against "group thinking", where conformity takes precedence over independent thinking.

Estimating is not negotiating (This should be clear for all stakeholders).

Category: Standards