Resources for my session on early estimating

As part of my session A Method for Getting Early Estimates Right at DrupalCon CPH, DrupalCamp Austin, Drupal DevDays Brussels and DrupalCon Chicago, I've made the example requirements and the resulting estimation sheet available. You can also find the slides from DrupalCon Chicago as a PDF or view them on SlideShare.

Video recording

Here's the video recording of the session in Chicago: http://www.archive.org/details/getting_early_estimates_right

Example requirements

I've prepared example requirements to be used in the session. These requirements are for a hypothetical link directory site to be moved to Drupal.

From: johndoe@awesomecoolwebsites.com To: You Subject: Link directory on Drupal

Hey,

We're looking into moving our site awesomecoolwebsites.com to drupal and wonder how much it would cost. We would like to get rid of the proprietary software we use and have more flexibility. Drupal seems to be the best choice for us.

Our site is a link directory where people with awesomely cool sites can post links to their sites. The directory is divided into categories and people can pay for premium exposure. We also have something called "link of the day" which costs $50 and puts a link to your site on the front page.

The site has a blog where we post updates and business articles on a regular basis. This blog is written by several people and they can only be able to edit their own blog posts. Though they should be able to add other users who can edit their posts so that they can cooperate on a post.

We're not planning on migrating content but we're offshoring the work and all old links will be added manually. We want to tag content too and we think it's best to migrate manually and do the tagging at the same time.

It's important that it's super easy to post new links and comment on blog posts. When you add a link you get a user account. Unless you have one already. Also, administrators must be able to approve links posted. Admins should get an email when links are added so they can go and check. We want captcha so that automated postings are prevented.

When you buy a premium link you pay with credit card, we have a processor for this and drupal needs to integrate with them. It's important that users feel super safe when submitting links. For this reason the whole submit process must be over secure connection.

We plan on launching the new drupalized site in the next six months.

Looking forward to your quote.

Sincerely,

John Website Manager

Estimation sheet

I've also estimated the "link directory" requirements and made the estimates available as a Google Docs spreadsheet so you can see the formulas used:

You need to be logged into your Google Account and Google Docs in order to make a copy (File > Make a copy...) of this sheet! Downloading the sheet as XLS does not result in a sheet that works like the Google Docs version.

Version 3: http://bit.ly/estimationsheet3

See also the Excel version by Sue Mildrum.

Version 1 (from DrupalCon CPH): http://bit.ly/estimationsheet

Estimation sheet template

This is a Google Docs template you can use to create new estimation sheets. It has all the formulas ready. Make sure to customize the sheet locale, rates, currency and uncertainty factors to match your project.

http://bit.ly/estimationtemplate3

Books

These are the two books I recommend to anyone curious about software estimation:

• Agile Estimating and Planning
• Software Estimation – Demystifying the Black Art