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How To Make Precise Estimates in Software Development
Story points are not the answer, and to be honest, I think story points are mostly useless.
How long time does it take to get to work? Don’t answer yet. We’ll get back to this question in a second.
Some may say that you’ll never accurately estimate anything. You’ll never get any better at estimating. New things always pop up to invalidate your previous estimates, so what good is it?
Let me tell you, it’s a lie. You can learn how to provide good-enough estimates.
Though, it’s true that more often than not, estimates are just wild guesses in disguise.
Estimates should be based on (real) expertise.
My advice is, to hold back on providing estimates for tasks in domain areas and technologies that you don’t have direct, hands-on experience with. Guessing estimates without the necessary expertise leads to project setbacks and progress is hard — if not impossible — to report on.
Even senior developers haven’t tried everything, and cannot reliably estimate tasks which they don’t have hands-on experience with.
It all comes down to experience. While you may never estimate a task 100% accurately…
