• Fundamentals
• What works
• Why things go wrong
• Case Study
• Questions & Answers

• Estimation is essential for development but often is a ‘guess’.

• We must negotiate expectations for collaboration

• I’ll check in the unit tests by noon
• I’ll have the search feature implemented by Friday
• We will have the project done in December

• Why do we need to estimate?

• We need to set expectations
• We need to allocate time and resources
• Other tasks depend on its completion
• We need to make better estimates in the future

• Effort can be structured based on the visibility of results.

• Tasks – effort that produces an identifiable and valuable output
• Activities – a sequence of tasks 
• Projects – a complex sequence of activities

• Estimation with any accuracy gets increasingly hard, perhaps impossible for certain processes.

• Complex projects
• Changes in requirements or resources
• Dependencies on client stakeholders

• Projects are seen to fail or succeed based on the accuracy of the initial estimates.

• Comparison – this task is like another task I completed

• Ranking – this task is harder (or easier) than another task

• Coercion– we are told how long a task will take

• Time-boxing – I can allocate only this amount of time

• Three=-points – Optimistic, pessimistic, likely paths

• We often neglect our experience in estimating tasks.

• Estimates express ‘ideal’ time and effort
• Communication
• Meetings
• Set up and tear-down