Time scales

CaptainComedy · 12 Sep 2008 at 22:24

hate time scaling, having my first freelance job where I have to decide on the time scale - how the heck do I know how long it will take?

I havent given a time scale before professionally, so if there's any tips I would greatly appreciate it, come out of uni, got first job and now first freelance since where they want an approximate time scale, but all the work I ahve always done - the time scale was always set

ps

hate to admit it but Im a lill drunk, but this is a serious post so pls no trolling

Haircut · 13 Sep 2008 at 08:02

Surely you must have done some sort of estimating before? If not how would you know you would be able to complete work in the time scales given?

There are a couple of approaches to take really.
Top down, which is where you compare the work to other things you've done that are similar and make an estimate based on how long it's taken you to complete similar pieces of work before.
Then there's bottom up, which is where you break the work down into smaller chunks (ideally each no more that a couple of days) and estimate each of these. Add them all up, add in a bit of buffer time and that's your estimate.

It might be an idea to try both approaches and hopefully they should come to roughly the same figure.
Obviously this is a brief overview, but I find it hard to believe you've ever done any development without having to do an estimate.

Tripnologist · 13 Sep 2008 at 14:15

Haircut said:
add in a bit of buffer time and that's your estimate

This is very important. You never know what problems you might run into and clients really aren't happy when you deliver later than promised.

Promise late and deliver early is a great motto.

JIMA · 13 Sep 2008 at 17:20

Hi,

I usually split the work up into identifiable chunks. Then I assign it a number of days depending on how complex I think it's going to be for either yourself or the person it's being given to do:

3 days - Difficult
2 days - Moderate
1 day - Easy change

If a piece of work is going to take more than 3 days then break it down again.

Remember to include time for testing in those estimates. You'll also need to consider which tasks can be done at the same time, and which must be done in sequence as this can greatly affect timescales even if one person is doing all the work.

A large part of getting estimates right is experience as you'll find yourself estimating very similar tasks quite quickly.

Hope that's useful.

Jim

CaptainComedy · 14 Sep 2008 at 14:38

work I've done in the past the time scales were given to me, university deadlines, projects where Im brought into, never had to give the time scale myself

Tripnologist · 14 Sep 2008 at 15:08

codec said:
work I've done in the past the time scales were given to me, university deadlines, projects where Im brought into, never had to give the time scale myself

I think the point he was trying to make is that even if you've not had to give time scales, you've still done the work so should have a rough idea of how long things should take.

Haircut · 15 Sep 2008 at 12:58

Tripnologist said:
I think the point he was trying to make is that even if you've not had to give time scales, you've still done the work so should have a rough idea of how long things should take.

Exactly, for instance if someone gave you a piece of work to design and build a new e-commerce site and asked you to have it ready by the end of the week you'd know it wasn't feasible.

Obviously that's an extreme example but I can't believe you would just blindly do any piece of work asked of you with an arbitrary deadline without thinking how long it might actually take you.