

Ask HN: Tools for estimating project hours - egutman

Wondering if anyone had any good tools and techniques on how they estimate the time in can take to complete a web development project, whether it be a feature or merely a tool.<p>Thanks in advance!
======
lhorie
Hofstadter's Law <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law> :)

Seriously though. I usually do work breakdown structures (e.g. HTML+CSS for
layout is one task, content styling is another task, widget styling,
javascript to drive each UI element are quoted individually, forms
individually, etc etc.

The idea is that you should be able to estimate tasks that you do often fairly
accurately since you do them often.

In addition, I increase the estimated time by a percentage to account for
things like bug fixes, back and forth with the rest of the team, client
feedback, etc. Each item has its own multiplier (e.g. a client might be
difficult, so you up the multiplier for that)

------
hotmind
Have you tried <http://estimator.astuteo.com> ?

