Best way to estimate development effort ?

Amazon
oraoraora

Go to company page Amazon

oraoraora
Jun 13, 2020 7 Comments

as title - how do you estimate the development effort when someone asked you about it ?

Current what i do is - estimate effort via days:
1. Look into code, depending on the change, estimate the time needed (including testing locally)
2. Account for time taken to let my team peer review my changes
3. time taken for changes to deploy
4. 10% extra time padding - in case of emergency fixes

what can i do better in this case ? also, in the case of where i dont have confidence for estimated development effort needed, how should i convey it to the business ?

TC 130k

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TOP 7 Comments
  • Yahoo
    JabS27

    Go to company page Yahoo

    JabS27
    Just code it in a few days and then give estimates. Helps you reap the benefits
    Jun 14, 2020 1
    • Amazon
      oraoraora

      Go to company page Amazon

      oraoraora
      OP
      This - what if you haven’t start coding (you’re busy with something) and you’re asked for an estimate for the next few days?
      Jun 14, 2020
  • Intuit
    KUHK11

    Go to company page Intuit

    KUHK11
    For unclear tasks we break down overall feature in to a “spike/exploration” ticket. Outcome of that would be more tickets with estimates and may be a design doc if needed.

    As you become more familiar with code your estimates will become more accurate.
    Jun 14, 2020 0
  • Yahoo
    OThc73

    Go to company page Yahoo

    OThc73
    Your process looks good, but you should multiply by 2 or 3 at the end. It's super hard to create good estimates.
    Jun 14, 2020 1
    • Amazon
      cheb732

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      cheb732
      It’s especially hard at amazon where doing the simplest things is made impossibly complex by the thickheaded and self-interested gatekeepers you need to run through
      Jun 15, 2020
  • Yahoo
    OThc73

    Go to company page Yahoo

    OThc73
    I estimated this thread would be dead in June, but look at us now.
    Oct 8, 2020 0
  • Amazon
    getit12

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    getit12
    Completely agree with @cheb732. Each task takes 2x to 3x atleast
    Oct 8, 2020 0