Estimating time for tasks and generating an overall project schedule can be painful. I always feel like there are too many educated guesses that go into schedules and estimating time. Estimates range from very educated, to almost complete guesses. Sometimes the estimates are dead on, most of the time they are pretty close. However, there always seems to be a handful in every project that are really off. These bad estimates are what cause people to work 80 hour weeks. Below are some strategies that may make the process of estimating and scheduling more accurate and less painful.
Estimation/Scheduling
If you write software for someone else, chances are very good that you’ve had to guess how long a given activity will take. The only real advice I’ve ever received on the topic is probably similar to advice you’ve heard. “Take a guess, multiply by x, and that’s your estimate”. This is a really crappy way of generating estimates. The problem is mitigated a bit because most of the time estimation of a large project is made up of a ton of small pieces that are estimated separately. Hopefully under-estimation in some areas will be countered by over-estimation in others. However, this is still just wishful thinking. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. When it does not, the result can be painful.
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