ASP.NET Application – Making a Time Estimate

Question

Hi,

We are building an ASP.NET application.

Here I need to make time estimate for the entire application. At present I am using my past experience and some thumb rules to arrive to a rough estimate.

So now my doubt is that do people use past experience and few thumb rules to make it or use some common methodologies/practices such as Cocomo or Functional point analysis etc.?

If so would you please refer the best links for these so that I could go through them and start practicing.

Many Thanks, Regards. Bhavna.

Answer 1

The only way to achieve an accurate estimate is:

1) The job is (practically) identical to one you've done previously.

2) Break tasks down until each task is less than 4 hours in duration.

(1) is rarely the case, and (2) is hard!

Identify and Manage your risks: Identify any unknowns or areas which are known (or likely) to be difficult. Monitor these tasks' progress to minimise impact on your project.

Answer 2

Steve McConnell wrote a good book on the topic: http://amzn.com/0735605351

Answer 3

And don't forget, an estimation is nothing more than that, an estimation. It will never be 100% accurate. You can minimize deviations and manage them, like Mitch Wheat said, but bottom line is that an estimation should never be looked at as an exact thing. The problem is convincing management of this principle :)

Answer 4

Function point analysis is good. But I generally go by this approach.

Identify the roles in the system. Identify the Use Cases of the applications and common and discrete use cases by each role. Bifurcate the Use Cases into High Medium Low complexity. depending on your skill/mandays matrix your organization has, you should be able to estimate the efforts (number of manadys) Depending on the efforts and number of people on the project, you can estimate the calendar days.

Don't forget the documentation, Integration testing, system testing, Peer reviews, User Acceptance testing timings :)