Re^2: PM Confessional

[Albannach]

That reminds me of something a senior engineer told me about 20 years ago on the topic of estimating effort: double your first number and go the the next larger unit. So if your first reaction is 30 seconds, better say 60 minutes. Four hours is more likely to be 8 days, and so on. I'm still crap at estimating individual task effort, but I'm much better at total project cost at least.

[fullermd]

These sort of rules of thumb sound half-funny half-useful, until the day comes that you apply them and still wind up behind an 8-ball...

Er, not that that's ever happened to me, three times in a row, or anything. No siree...

[MidLifeXis]

Ours was multiply by two and add 40.