As project manager, your required to organize your time so that the project meets a deadline. Is there some sort of equation to use for estimating how long development will take for let's say the database (like time = sql storeprecedures * tables manipulated or something similar) or are you just stuck having to get the experience to get adequate estimations?
views:
102answers:
3
A:
There will be such a formula as soon as computers can start generating all code themselves. Until then you are stuck with human developers who all have different levels of skill and development speed.
EBGreen
2008-09-04 17:33:22
A:
There's no set formula out there that I've seen that would really work. Fogbugz has its monte carlo simulator which has somewhat of a concept for this, but really, experience is going to be your best point of reference. Every developer and every project will be different!
Noah
2008-09-04 17:36:24
+1
A:
As project manager you have to remember that the best you will ever we be able to do on your own is give your best guess as to how long a given project will take. How accurate you are. depends on your experience and the scope of the project.
The only way I know of to get a reasonably accurate estimate that is it to break the project into individual tasks and get the developer who will be doing the actual work to put an estimate on each task. You can then use an evidence based algorithm that takes the estimation accuracy of each developer into account to give you the probability of hitting a given deadline.
If the probability is too low, you have two choices: remove features or move the deadline.
Further reading:
Patrick Ritchie
2008-09-05 18:36:06