The Art of Effort Estimation - Accuracy not necessary

Estimating efforts to complete a software project or a component is a fact of life for all software engineers. No matter what stage your career is in, be it project manager or junior developer, there will be times that you need to come up with estimations.

But effort estimation is hard. Software components and projects come in different shapes and sizes in: technology used and their maturity; customer expectation; time constraint; previous experiences... The list can go on and on.

I think the obsession to get an accurate estimation is missing the point. There is simply no such thing. Rather, what counts is how the project is executed against the estimations.

So how do you come up with a good plan that a project can be planned against? I believe a copule of simple policy will be able to achieve this:

#1: Estimation must be made by the person who will be ultimately responsible for the job.
#2: Great trust must be given to the person making the estimation.

That's all about it. The rules are self fulfilling because they provide an implicit social contract to the engineers.