.NET Brain Droppings

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The Key to Good Software Estimates

Scoble heard a new acronymn:

I heard about a new three letter acronymn tonight. If someone says "DRE" on a report it means "Direct Rectal Extraction." Or, "I pulled these figures out of you know where."

Funny, so now there's an official word for how I create my software estimates.  One of these days (when I have a free hour or so), I'll rant about how managers want to know how long it will take me to build something before they give me any type of requirements for what it is I need to build!

That sh*t happes here all the time... right Mark ;)

[Listening to: Acumen Nation - Parasite Nation]

 

Posted: Sep 23 2003, 05:26 PM by dbrowning | with 4 comment(s)

Comments

Doug Thews said:

The best way to estimate is to break down items into pieces that you know take no more than 40 hours (based on prior experience) and then add the tasks up (including some type of emergency effort for those unexpected problems that always kill a project). You just can't estimate "building an Expense/Revenue System" on the fly - you've got to break it down.
# September 23, 2003 6:16 PM

Scott Galloway said:

Yup, problem is that on lots of small projects for inexperienced clients, they want you to 'invent' the best solution and give the costs at the first pitch...not easy...
# September 23, 2003 6:21 PM

Mark Hurley said:

So Don -- what's the chance of you guys estimating the hardware for the MIR room, but we don't know exactly what we need yet? ;)
# September 24, 2003 11:15 PM

Paul Callahan said:

Hmm that'll be 128 hours for deployment configuration... plus...
# September 29, 2003 6:05 PM
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