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Questions tagged [estimation]

Questions related to tips and techniques about software project estimations: development time, effort, team size, software size, execution time, run time resource usage. Please ask on https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic if your question is not directly related to code.

Fred Brooks said:

It is very difficult to make a vigorous, plausible and job-risking defense of an estimate that is derived by no quantitative method, supported by little data, and certified chiefly by the hunches of the managers

On a day-to-day business context, the word estimate is often used when asking for a commitment, and this is incorrect. An estimate is not a target, not a commitment. An estimate is an assessment, based on prior experience, judgement and possibly on incomplete information about the time or resources needed to build a software project. An estimate can also be requested for the size or configuration or system resources needed to execute a software product.

Estimates always have a degree of error, so this should always be kept in mind when using an estimate to make a decision. More precision is achieved for an estimate spending more time or money - an estimate may be quick, precise and inexpensive: pick two of the three attributes.

Books about software estimation:

  • Software Estimation. Demystifying the Black Art. Steve McConnell. 2006 Microsoft Press, Redmond, WA.

  • Software Engineering Economics. Barry W. Boehm. 1981 Prentice-Hall Inc. Englewood cliffs, NJ.

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Statistics - How to calculate 95% confidence interval

I need little help. I have calculated the parameters with non linear estimation. Now, I need to calculate the 95% confidence interval for calculated parameters. How I can obtain the 95% confidence interval using Statistica for Windows ? Or any other…
Toni N
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Undercomittment in Scrum

I have a team of 5 developers working a 10 day sprint schedule. After I deduct the scrum meeting times from their total capacity (300 hrs) I end up with 247.5 hrs. The breakdown is - Total - planning - daily scrum * 10 - review - retrospective -…
EightyOne Unite
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Unit for estimating hours in Scrum tool

I've been learning Scrum and trying a tool called Acunote for use with it. My question is about two fields I have there, for each task. They're "estimate" and "remaining". What unit should I use for those? Do I use Story Points? What about the…
Joao de Araujo
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Kalman filtering; Computing cross-covariance between state vectors at two different time

I'm interested in computing of cross-covariance between state vectors at two different times; Cov{xk,xk-m}. For example considering xk & Pk, the state vector and covariance matrix at time step of k, and xk-m & Pk-m the state vector at time step of…
user2437244
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How to decide when to script something rather than do it manually?

Sometimes I find myself needing to do something that could be automated or could be manual. E.g. I just ran a particular script 8 times, making a small change in between each run. I certainly could have written a script that would have automated…
Jacob Mattison
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How much time is going to take a process - by WCF Service

I’m here with another question this time. I have an application which builds to move data from one database to another. It also deals with validation & comparison between the databases. When we start moving the data from source to destination it…
user2066540
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Estimating Parameters in R from a Weighted Sum of Lagged Variables

I am afraid I am stuck with an estimation problem. I have two variables, X and Y. Y is explained by the weighted sum of n lagged values of X. My aim is to estimate the two parameters c(alpha0,alpha1) in: Yt = Sum from j=1 to n of ( ( alpha0 + alpha1…
Chris437
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Histogram based probability density estimation

How do I make a histogram based probability density estimate of each of the marginal distributions p(x1 ) and p(x2 ) of this data set: import numpy as np import matplotlib.pyplot as plt linalg = np.linalg N = 100 mean = [1,1] cov = [[0.3,…
pythonnewbie
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Estimate multiple Regression Models for groups and save a certain parameter value

I looking for a way to estimate various models (lets say 10) and save a certain parameter value from each estimation in a vector with stata. Im more of a R-guy and here it is very simple working example with R-code n1 <- 100 n2 <- 10 group <-…
Druss2k
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MLE in r is very slow

I am doing an EM estimation, in the M step of which I need Max Likelihood Estimation, which has 24 parameters. I tried the nlm/optim/maxLik functions in R. They are all very slow. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks. This is the LogL function:…
user17748
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Non-numerical function estimation and integration

Please, put in R the following structures: g <- c(0.00125277273229879, 0.00126154615176554, 0.0012703959424814, 0.00127932294600281, 0.00128832795839672, 0.00129741176435766, 0.00130657513720778, 0.00131581896967928, 0.00132514399529097,…
Lisa Ann
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Logic for rate approximation

I am looking for some logic to solve the below problem. There are n transaction amounts : T1,T2,T3.. Tn. Commission for these transactions are calculated using a rate table provided as below. if amount between 0 and A1 -> rate is r1 if amount…
Rohan
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Estimation of the percentage of windows OS users using .net 3.0?

I am building a web application that has very high requirement. I wanted to build it first in silverlight and activex, with javascript breaching between them. Later I started considering using xbap. The problem is that xbap demands .net 3.0, and…
vondip
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Estimate of the number of children in a maze game tree

Suppose we have a maze game with 1 mouse and 4 cats in a 20*20 grid maze. Assume each agent in the maze can move N, E, S, W. What would your best guess be as to the number of children of each node in this massive game tree? This is my best guess…
user595334
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Agile estimation with tech-debt

When estimating (story points) a story that consists on extending a current functionality with a known tech-debt, should we consider the effort that will be spent to refactor the current code or should we estimate independently of this…
Marcelo Oliveira
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