Ask HN: Agency developers, how do you estimate time accurately?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13660837

by Grangar • 9 years ago

1 1 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

gerlv• 9 years ago

Most likely you won't be able to estimate project accurately. I've co-founded a digital agency, and after 5 years we still can get 100% accuracy.

But here are few things that will impact the accuracy:

- how familiar are you with the technology - how quickly the dependencies change (tech dependencies). - how technical your project manager is - you will likely to spend more time in the meeting explaining some trivial stuff if PM isn't technical. - how many visual design revisions you need to implement during this estimate - how big is the task - if it's bigger than 2 days your accuracy drops.

My advise is to keep the tasks small, no more than 2 days (3 days or 20 hours max). And total phase smaller than around 200 hours. You also need to make sure that everyone is on the same page - if there is no good communications your estimate might need to be revised during the development phase.

Even if you implement the same project the second time - it still not guaranteed to be faster than the first project.

Ask HN: Agency developers, how do you estimate time accurately?

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