Asking me to estimate how long something will take is like asking me to guess how many gumballs are in the jar, but I can’t see the jar.
@adhdjesse @codinghorror don’t even know what a gumball is, so the example is even more aptly accurate for me…

@adhdjesse @codinghorror btw I think I read once that the most accurate way to estimate is to come up with a value, then double it, and then move it up one order of magnitude.

I still do it, and I still miss by a fathom…

@argonaut @adhdjesse I can't recommend this book enough. It is old but so good and really timeless: https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-long-would-it-take-if-everything-went-wrong/
How Long Would It Take if Everything Went Wrong?

I'm currently reading Steve McConnell's new book, Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735605351/codihorr-20]. The section on individual expert judgment provided one simple reason why my estimates are often so horribly wrong:> If you ask a developer to estimate a set of

Coding Horror
@codinghorror what makes my estimation case unabashedly impossible is that I’m a designer, but I’d still give the book a try since I love optimizing (which is mostly solving puzzles others can’t).