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How Do You Accurately Estimate Programming Time?

Posted by Soulskill on from the step-one-invent-time-travel dept.

itwbennett writes "It can take a fairly stable team of programmers as long as six months to get to a point where they're estimating programming time fairly close to actuals, says Suvro Upadhyaya, a Senior Software Engineer at Oracle. Accurately estimating programming time is a process of defining limitations, he says. The programmers' experience, domain knowledge, and speed vs. quality all come into play, and it is highly dependent upon the culture of the team/organization. Upadhyaya uses Scrum to estimate programming time. How do you do it?"

3 of 483 comments (clear)

  1. W.A.G. by ipb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    After 40+ years of programming it's still a Wild Assed Guess.

    You're never given enough time to prepare your estimate, marketing has already
    determined the delivery date, and management doesn't know what it is you're
    supposed to create anyway.,

  2. Re:It's Easy by VoxMagis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wish I had mod points for this - it's the most realistic answer yet!

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    -- I really need to bleed off some of this /. karma.
  3. Quid pro quo by HangingChad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The programmers' experience, domain knowledge, and speed vs. quality all come into play, and it is highly dependent upon the culture of the team/organization.

    My time estimates will be as accurate as your specs. You stick to the specs, I'll stick to the estimate.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage