Common mistakes during Estimation

Its been a loooong time since I've added to this blog. And what a day the last day of year 2010 and here I am typing away with gusto.

This blog is to bring in the most common mistakes that we software engineers make during our estimation. Be it the normal SDLC or be during Agile, be it while preparing a WBS or be it while preparing a Prioritized backlog estimate, mistakes are bound to creep up. I was searching for some common mistakes and here are a few which appealed to me,

Source Jones in the book "Estimating software costs", Got this info thru the pmhut.

Some of the most common things that go amiss are as follows:

1. Underestimating the effort of Doc and Code reviews, Code walkthru's, inspections and testing
2. Underestimating the effort to provide documentation
3. Underestimating travel and meeting costs
4. Ignoring scope creep (approx estimate at 1-5 % per month)
5. Exaggerating the effect of tools, languages and methods
6. Missing special testing requirements
7. Ignoring / underestimating project management / support effort
8. Forgetting a specialist area e.g. Estimators, FP specialists, performance tuners, QA, etc
9. Forgetting to include user effort
10. Ignoring maintenance after delivery if a support period is required

In case you the reader do happen to know a few more, let me know through your comments.

Best,
Manuswath

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good one! But the first mistake most of them do during estimate is not understanding clearly what customer wants and they indeed estimate for something that customer doesn't want. - Basav
December 31, 2010 at 3:49 PM
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