Using the above methodology, the tasks are broken down to a reasonably fine granularity. You certainly want Dave's input, but basically, you run a report against the database and you see how long Dave took last time he did the same task.

If you're having developers do the same task twice, without reusing the results from the first round, you're got a problem at a different level.

But, seriously, the "yesterday's weather" approach to estimating suffers from several problems. For one, the context may be different. Dave may have taken N days to write the last widget because Susan (who knows a lot about widgets) was sitting nearby. Susan has since moved on. Is it now going to take Dave N days to write another widget? Maybe yes, but probably no.

For another, Dave may have spent a lot of time climbing up the learning curve the first time. What took N days then make take N/2 now.

In reply to Re^4: On Improving One's Estimates by dws
in thread On Improving One's Estimates by dws

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