Project management estimating time, budget and product pricing

Question

I have been a software developer for a while but was not interested in the above topics, currently I am put in the position of wanting to learn more about them but don't have a clue where to begin.

I have done task estimations and I can do decent ones, but have little/none experience in the field of budget/product pricing and would want to learn more.

Do you have any suggestions of good resources that I could look up in order to learn more (eg. books, blogs, ...)

This need arised while talking to a friend about management and he brought up management terms that I wasn't aware of (eg. KPI, ...)

Answer 1

http://www.project-management-basics.com/estimation-budget.shtml

I think this will help you..

Answer 2

Project Management with Respect to Time and Budget

There are a couple of books you should check out:

Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design.

Software Project Survival Guide

Software Estimation : Demystifying the Black Art

Joel Spolsky posted a quick estimation technique.

I found this software project management blog.

I attended a Project Management class (as part of a Masters in Technical Management) and they used the Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling book. It is a very dry book but has a ton of very useful information; luckily our professors were pretty good at their job (one topic that helped me a lot was dealing with conflict -- but that has little to do with estimation and budget which your question seems to focus on).

Product Pricing

I think that the book, Micro-ISV: From Vision to Reality, discusses that. Basically, you should already have established a relationship with some people that represent your customer base and who have cobbled together a crappy solution. If your software represents an elegant solution that fixes their needs, you ask them 1) would you use this if it was free? If they say yes, then you ask them 2) Would you pay a million dollars for it? At which point they'll say, no way, the most I would pay would be $500 (or whatever) -- that's one way to price your product. :)

Management

If you are going to be managing people, read these books:

Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams

Answer 3

The doubling method works best for me. Estimate the time & money you think it will take..then double it