How to estimate programming time

I really want to tell everyone how I estimate the time needed to build software projects.

In the past 10 years, I’ve been asked these question hundreds of times:

• “We need to implement this feature. How long is it going to take you?”
• “Give me a detailed overview of how much time this project is going to take in terms of time. 1 month? 2 months?”
• “I want you to ship this. 50 hours of billable time are enough?”

The answer to those questions has either been a bet, in the most optimistic case or a leap of faith, knowing that if I promised a number, that would probably have been my paycheck regardless of the actual time it took.

Sometimes with long term clients, I was able to amortize the projects that exceeded my estimations with projects where I completed the work earlier than I expected, letting the client know.

Ultimately I ended up saying “I can’t estimate”.

So, the answer to “I really want to tell everyone how I estimate the time needed to build software projects” is: I don’t. But I can estimate that no one is really able to estimate when it comes to building software, because of the inner complexities that this field can put against you.

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“Real engineers” are going to find this hard to admit, but I’ve never been your typical real engineer type. Estimating is probably the hardest thing when working as a developer.

Here’s a cool reference table you can use when you need to estimate a task:

This might be a good estimation of our lack of estimation, but of course, things can also work in the reverse: a thing you estimate might take 5 days might only take 1 day because you find everything is already in place to add it, and it takes much less than anticipated. Some might overestimate, projecting they might have difficulties, adding a 30% more of what they think. Team projects estimation is even harder, I won’t even try.

What to do then?

Instead of detailed estimating, I propose continuous communication with the client or boss or whoever commissioned your work and do weekly checkups on the project progress. Without pre-defining when the process will end.

Because after all the process will never end.

This article was originally published on Flavio Copes’ blog.

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