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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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Estimating time in a project that includes unfamiliar concepts?

When giving a time estimate for a project that includes work in areas you don't have experience with how do you estimate? In most cases it is hard enough to get the estimate right when the project's areas are familiar. What methods have you used in…
TWA
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Is there a way to get the lead time from Estimate to Completion in Azure DevOps Dashboard

I've been using Azure DevOps Dashboard for a while now and it's working nicely. One gap I have found is in it's Lead Time Chart. This goes from date creation to date completed, which in an Agile world doesn't make sense. Backlogs can be thought of a…
John
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Should I get the same results with the estimation mode and the simultaion mode in GEKKO?

I am estimating some parameters with mode 5 in GEKKO and then passing these parameters to a simulation model (mode 4), but I don't get the same results for my variables. Is this caused by accumulated error due to the fact that the values of the…
user606273
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Who should give high-level project estimates?

I've just come from a discussion about who is best placed to give estimates on a given piece of work. At a detailed level I'd always say that the best estimate comes from the person who actually has to do the work as they have the full understanding…
Klelky
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Orbital equations, and power required to run them

Due to a discussion on the SO IRC today, I'm curious about orbital mechanics, and The equations needed to solve orbital problems The computing power required to solve complex problems The question in particular is calculating when the Earth will…
Adam Davis
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How many of you are recording their historical project-data - for future estimates and how are you doing it?

When working on a project - I always estimate my tasks and calculate how long it will take me to finish. So in the end I get a time-span in which the project should be finished (it rarely is). My question is - do you record your data and assumptions…
Gambrinus
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Poisson Regression by hand

I want to do a poisson regression by hand and define a function that can be used for estimation of an arbitrary number of coefficients. I have 2 questions: First: How can I get a matrix of betas and don't have to write every beta explicity. I want…
Dima Ku
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ARCore scale estimation precision

According to this question ARCore works in meter. But, since a single camera can't be used to guess the size of what is viewed -This is a known phenomenon for monocular SLAM which also can lead to scale drift, which the TANGO devices avoided by…
codec-abc
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value at risk estimation using fGarch package in R

I am trying to make a similar analysis to McNeil & Frey in their paper 'Estimation of tail-related risk measures for heteroscedastic financial time series: an extreme value approach' but I am stuck with a problem when implementing the models. The…
Madz_When_R_goes_Crazy
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Tag Estimation (Supervised Learning)

I have several thousand samples, which are already labeled as "A" or "Not A". Each sample has assigned [0-n] categories. What I am trying to achieve is to find out which categories are suitable for labeling a new sample as "A" or "Not A". My…
Matthias Ivantsits
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Use Kalman Filter in location estimating

I have been trying to understand Kalman filter and how to use it. I am planning to write it in java. I have real time location (longtitude, latitude) and speed data. I need to find the next location of a moving object. Locations are accurate there…
gunescelil
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Calculate the volume under a plot of kernel bivariate density estimation

I need to calculate a measure called mutual information. First of all, I need to calculate another measure, called entropy, for example, the joint entropy of x and y: -∬p(x,y)·log p(x,y)dxdy So, to calculate p(x,y), I used the kernel density…
Alex Quintino Barbi
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Machine learning: optimal parameter values in reasonable time

Sorry if this is a duplicate. I have a two-class prediction model; it has n configurable (numeric) parameters. The model can work pretty well if you tune those parameters properly, but the specific values for those parameters are hard to find. I…
oopcode
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Blackberry - Estimate port of Android app with GPS and Google Maps

Lets say I have an Android app that uses Google Maps and GPS.Uses custom views and timers. How much time will it require to develop it for Blackberry? What changes will be required? Can the UI be reused? I am totally new to Blackberry, though I…
Pria
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Video Stabilization - using estimateGlobalMotionLeastSquares opencv 2.4.7

I am a newbie about Video Stabilization field. Now I am researching about it. I'm coding a small video stabilization demo. But I am stuck in some problems I use the function "estimateGlobalMotionLeastSquares" in OpenCV to estimate global motion But…
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