Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#31

Post by randren1 »

mozz100 wrote: post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

Agreed on the Bob Martin book. For project estimates I have presented estimates this way and I find that executives understand it and it lets me present an estimate and a commitment separately in an understandable way. A summary of his explanation of estimates as probability distributions is here: https://codingjourneyman.com/2014/10/06/the-clean-coder-esti...

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#32

Post by ThirdFoundation »

mozz100 wrote: post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

Just a heads up, I think there's an error in the description next to the graph estimating work time.

I'm seeing this message:

>>> Total is expected to be about 22.3 days.

>>> * likely to be greater than 15 days (p = 95%)

>>> * has a 50% chance of exceeding 20 days

>>> * unlikely to be less than 33 days (p = 95%)

Is the last bullet point correct? Shouldn't it be __likely__ to be less than 33 days?

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#33

Post by mozz100 »

ThirdFoundation wrote: post #32
mozz100 wrote: post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

Just a heads up, I think there's an error in the description next to the graph estimating work time. I'm seeing this message: >>> Total is expected to be about 22.3 days. >>> * likely to be greater than 15 days (p = 95%) >>> * has a 50% chance of exceeding 20 days >>> * unlikely to be less than 33 days (p = 95%) Is the last bullet point correct? Shouldn't it be __likely__ to be less than 33 days?

dur, yep - thank you for the catch. You are right: this is the worst kind of typo! Will fix

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#34

Post by ncphillips »

jaggederest wrote: post #8

Somewhat heretical, but I generally don't. I usually explain that development is an iterative process, and that I generally deliver work as soon as it's done. We talk about the knobs that are available to tune the work to the goal, and how to measure goals. We talk about containing costs, and working together to deliver good value. I find that in general, estimates are rarely, if ever, accurate to any significant deg…

I don’t think this should be heretical. I’m pretty sure all the evidence is in favour of your view.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#35

Post by senseitit »

Start writing the brief/project charter with all the stakeholders to map out their expectations. Based on it, create the initial plan for the project by breaking it down into smaller tasks, grouped by task lists for better organization. What we do next is to analyze any similar projects we had in the past and how long it took to complete them, so we can estimate time budgets for new tasks.

Our clients use https://paymoapp.com, where we add the initial plan as a temporary project. Once all time budgets and costs are set up, we convert the project into an estimate and share it with the client.

The client then reviews the estimate and either accepts or rejects it. If accepted, we go into production.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#36

Post by thomasmarcelis »

mozz100 wrote: post #13

(about estimating - I don't tend to write proposals) You could have a look at https://www.estigator.com (NB it's a half-finished side project right now) I'm no longer a contractor, although I have been, and I'm frequently asked by my new employers to provide estimates for dev tasks. Trouble is, businesses/clients tend to see an estimate as a promise, or a target. From the developer's point of view it is hard to do an…

I like the idea and could see myself using this. After trying the tool a bit, I liked it and had some thoughts.

I think your landing page communicates well, it was pretty clear what it was going to do. The only thing I wasn't sure about is if the tool is also meant for teams larger than one. Then I would need to be able to enter different costs based on different roles, but I'm not sure if that's the target audience.

You said the project is half finished, so I assume you have tons of small UI improvement ideas already... But I would really prefer a different method of adding new lines/tasks over just adding every type on add :), for example a dropdown with an add button.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#37

Post by edoceo »

I don't estimate, I work the other direction.

How much is it worth to fix? That's a much easier value to discover.

From there work backwards to determine how much to spend and where to prioritize.

Eg: a bug generates 3 email and 3 phone support issues per day, at a cost of 1h or $33/day - $12k/yr. Easy to justify spending one dev-week on the issue ($6k).

Or missing feature that lost a sale of $50k easily justify $5k to make some progress.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#38

Post by mikekchar »

williamdclt wrote: post #16
jaggederest wrote: post #8

Somewhat heretical, but I generally don't. I usually explain that development is an iterative process, and that I generally deliver work as soon as it's done. We talk about the knobs that are available to tune the work to the goal, and how to measure goals. We talk about containing costs, and working together to deliver good value. I find that in general, estimates are rarely, if ever, accurate to any significant deg…

> development is an iterative process, and that I generally deliver work as soon as it's done You're kinda arguing against yourself. I agree that dev is an iterative process and that estimating is a lost cause, but "deliver work as soon as it's done"? The whole point is that a "done" project doesn't exist. Deliver all the time (every day, every week at worst), iterate and stop the project when the client is happy wit…

I think the key is that showing progress early and often lets the customer start to get a feel for how long the entire process is going to take. This is one of the reasons for XP's idea of trying to do "vertical" but narrow slices of the application. Each story you work on should work through as many layers of the application as you can manage.

It's easy to write stories that are "do the UI for X", and then "do the back end for X". But often the UI (at least the first cut) is easy to code and comes out quickly, giving the customer the impression that everything will be quick. Then you work on the back end and it goes a lot more slowly, leading to mistrust. Alternatively, working on really complicated things up front (while generally a good idea) can give the customer the impression that the project is stalled and that it's never going to finish.

When you are doing iterative development, I think the real art is in choosing your stories. It's difficult, but when done well it removes most of the political friction in development.

Re: Ask HN: Developers, how do you estimate projects and write proposals?

#39

Post by pasta »

If you need to estimate then it's best to break work up in small parts and then estimate those. Because it's very tricky to estimate huge bulks of work.

There is however a lot of work you cannot estimate. If you still need to estimate the work you sometimes can set a max. For example you estimate that a API integration will cost you 16 hours but there are a lot of uncertainties. Then you can tell the client that you bill by the hour with a max of 32 hours.

Post reply on HN