I have been reading ‘Software Estimation’ by Steve McConnell which is about estimating software projects. I got interested in the subject a few months ago, because my interns were asking questions about how to estimate stories in Agile ceremonies. The company I work at does not have any estimating theory. Its a shoot from the hip, ‘wild ass guess’ environment. I didn’t really have a good answer for the interns.
A couple surprises are that research has shown software engineers typically underestimate tasks to the tune of about 30% of the actual time and that the range of estimation accuracy is around 1.2-16x.
