Tick-tock

I recently ran across a post on Slashdot about how to best estimate programming time, and it led me to ponder the effectiveness of my current estimation practices.

My process usually involves utilizing my experience with similar projects as benchmarks to judge how much time a future project might take. The components of most online development projects tend to be remarkably similar: an example that I often run into involves building a site with several front-end HTML and CSS pages, a few dynamic back-end pages, and some database tables. A simple example like this is pretty easy to estimate if you’ve done them a few times.

But the devil is in the details. The real difficulties with this type of estimation are all of the unknown aspects of the project that you have no comparison against. Maybe the client wants the site administration integrated with an unknown CMS. Or maybe they want to implement the newest social-media-craze-of-the-week. There’s usually a wrench in every project that lands squarely on your estimation plans.

Thankfully, this is where experience comes into play again. Although I might not be familiar with the specific CMS or social media API in question, a history with these types of projects will usually be a good yardstick against which to measure.

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