> Honestly, I feel the real lesson here is that, if you want accurate estimates, the job needs to be done end-to-end by someone who's done the exact same thing before - and because things change, "before" really means "recently".
I think I inadvertently addressed my attitude toward estimating software by forgetting estimation was even part of the topic. Heh… IMO the real lesson is that no one has ever done exactly the same thing before, otherwise you’re almost certainly paying too much for someone to do it again. In which case estimating is futile, until you’ve done sufficient work to approximate already doing the task under estimation. You can estimate when you’re reasonably close to completion, but the important skill is learning to recognize patterns… including the pattern that you’re facing unknown unknowns, and an unknown scope of same… and then to make the path to resolution more efficient.
I think I inadvertently addressed my attitude toward estimating software by forgetting estimation was even part of the topic. Heh… IMO the real lesson is that no one has ever done exactly the same thing before, otherwise you’re almost certainly paying too much for someone to do it again. In which case estimating is futile, until you’ve done sufficient work to approximate already doing the task under estimation. You can estimate when you’re reasonably close to completion, but the important skill is learning to recognize patterns… including the pattern that you’re facing unknown unknowns, and an unknown scope of same… and then to make the path to resolution more efficient.