Hi, well one advice is to start recording your current measures and check afterwards how close you were. Record things you forget that made your estimates go wrong, records the factor realhours vs estimate. Assume that when you think you know everything, you only know about 40% of whats going to happen. Adjust your estimate as you go along. Put your estimate on paper, and include your assumptions. If the assumptions change, check if you estimates need to be adjusted too.
Read up on software management lifecycle or books that describe software processes such as code complete or mythical manmonth, to understand WHY estimating a software project is hard, and how you can make your manager understand. It's pretty easy to become better at estimating theoretically, say you have a project and its estimate is 10 hours. Now it turns out to be 40 hours. Next time you estimate 20 hours, and you go 'hey but wait, i was wrong by 400% last time', so you say 80. The hard part of doing it this way is not having rock solid arguments to present to your boss. Other things that come with understanding the software process is the difference between the time it takes to hack something together, or create a software product, or a software system of combined working products. A proof of concept for a memory game might take 45 minutes, but a full flegded off the shelf sellable memory game might take a month. It's still just a memory game. etc etc To conclude my best advice is probably to: * start measuring, and try to understand why your estimate was wrong (or right) * read up on software development material greetz JC On 6/16/07, James Deakin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm looking to improve the accuracy of the estimations of time required which I give to my project managers. Does anyone have any good advice? Please note that I am far from a newbie as I have been programming actionScript ever since it first came out (with that nasty slash syntax). This is one area of the job which we never seem to talk about but its is one of the most important. James Deakin _______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
_______________________________________________ Flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com To change your subscription options or search the archive: http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders Brought to you by Fig Leaf Software Premier Authorized Adobe Consulting and Training http://www.figleaf.com http://training.figleaf.com
