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Project Estimation Does Not Have to Be Softwares Black Art

Author Steve McConnell demystifies

By Alex Handy

May 15, 2006 — (Page 1 of 4)
“It was a heck of a topic to write about,” said author Steve McConnell of his latest book: “Project Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art.” The subject was conceived eight years ago.

McConnell is no stranger to writing about software development; his previous tomes—such as “Rapid Development” and “Code Complete”—have been referred to as required reading for all developers.

Now chief software engineer at Construx Software Builders, the software consultancy he founded in 1996, McConnell was once named by Software Development Magazine as one of the world’s three most influential people in the software industry, along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds.

For his latest project, McConnell had to take a step back from building software to write about a topic that some consider to be akin to fortunetelling. At the end of March, SD Times sat down with McConnell and chatted about his new book and how best to predict the future.

SD Times: What two or three tips would you offer project managers who are about to estimate a new software development project?

Steve McConnell: Tip No. 1 is read my book [laughs], but that’s a difficult question to answer. The estimation challenge is significant enough; it’s really not possible to distill it into a pithy tip. My book has 118 tips. If I had to pick some, one would be base your estimate on historical data. Look at how you performed before and make your estimate based on how you’ve performed in the past. Try to break the estimate into multiple pieces. Divide feature areas and subsystems into different development teams. If you can decompose and estimate, you’re going to compose a more accurate result. Tip No. 3 is make sure you’re differentiating between your target estimates and your commitments. An estimate tells you how long and how much. A target is a description of what’s desirable. A commitment is the merging of those two.

Is there an easy equation for how many people you’ll need on any given project or how long it will take?

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