Microsoft Press' "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" is a good deep dive into the subject.
Found it via a talk by Jakob Persson at Drupalcon many years ago, he recommended a template-based spreadsheet approach where you estimate a project by splitting it into components and giving each a "confidence" level from 1-5, then adding fixed padding for various items like project management (20%), deployment (5%), buffer for unforeseen problems (20%) etc that essentially came down to "2-3x the initial estimate" but with some calculations to back it up, and made estimations systematically easy.
Noting that his more recent blog articles now recommend a value-based pricing approach for the consulting model (which I agree with and also shifted to in my freelance days).
Good to see more writing on estimation for engineers, Agile's story points model is nice for teams doing the work, but in many kinds of work when you're running a team there's someone above you who signs the checks that wants to know what something's going to (approximately) cost before they sign off on it.
Microsoft Press' "Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art" is a good deep dive into the subject.
Found it via a talk by Jakob Persson at Drupalcon many years ago, he recommended a template-based spreadsheet approach where you estimate a project by splitting it into components and giving each a "confidence" level from 1-5, then adding fixed padding for various items like project management (20%), deployment (5%), buffer for unforeseen problems (20%) etc that essentially came down to "2-3x the initial estimate" but with some calculations to back it up, and made estimations systematically easy.
His slides are here: https://www.slideshare.net/jakobpersson/the-science-of-guess...
The sheet template is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13MGHIxFOtbJ2Qxygc_Gx... - have used variations of it with great success for many years beyond when I shifted away from Drupal work.
Noting that his more recent blog articles now recommend a value-based pricing approach for the consulting model (which I agree with and also shifted to in my freelance days).
Good to see more writing on estimation for engineers, Agile's story points model is nice for teams doing the work, but in many kinds of work when you're running a team there's someone above you who signs the checks that wants to know what something's going to (approximately) cost before they sign off on it.